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American Economic Statecraft

Entry

Pan American Airways as infrastructure

Trippe shows private infrastructure acting as national reach when aviation, commerce, and diplomacy converge.

Author
Juan Trippe
Year
1935
Track
capital and industry
Citation
Juan Trippe and Pan American Airways operating record, 1927–1945.
Juan T. Trippe, president of Pan American Airways, receiving trans-Atlantic flight permits, Washington D.C., April 1937
Harris & Ewing, 1937, Library of Congress, public domain

Trippe shows private infrastructure acting as national reach when aviation, commerce, and diplomacy converge. Its place in the canon is not decorative. It marks a recurring problem for American economic statecraft: how law, capital, operators, and legitimacy combine when a nation tries to build strategic economic terrain.