In modern textbooks, Robert Triffin is remembered as the eminent economist who highlighted the unsustainability of the Bretton Woods’ international monetary system. According to Triffin, since the world economy uses a national currency for international settlements, the national economy issuing the reserve currency has to record balance of payment deficits, which are unsustainable over time as the deterioration of the issuing country’s external accounts eventually undermines the confidence in its currency. Therefore, the international economy is torn between, on the one side, the understandable wish to end the balance of payment deficits and, on the other side, the need to provide the world with international liquidity. Hence, the “dilemma” (which came to be known as the Triffin dilemma) was born, which is still debated today (Bordo and McCauley, 2017). Triffin’s solution for satisfying the world’s liquidity requirements and preventing the continuous balance of payments deficit is to create an International Clearing Union, with the power of issuing the international currency.
Although several recent and well-documented studies of economic thought have focused on Triffin’s career (Wilson, 2015; Maes, 2021) and his prominent role in rethinking regional monetary integration (Maes, 2013; Maes and Pasotti, 2016; Rojas, 2020), the significant role of exchange controls in his thought has not been the specific focus of further research. Caldentey and Vernengo (2018) deal with Triffin and exchange control policies, but their study addresses only his Latin American years (1942-1946)…