As Woodrow Wilson had feared, a punitive peace, against Germany that_ required heavy reparations payments proved counterproductive for general European postwar economic recovery. Crippled by runaway inflation and frustrated by its debt burden, Germany stopped paying reparations in 1923. Without German reparations, France, Great Britain, Italy, and other nations were unable to repay their war debts to the United States. The United States compounded the international economic crisis with the highest protective tariff-ever: the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922, named for its sponsors — Republican representative Joseph Fordney of Michigan and Republican senator Porter McCumber of North Dakota. With limited access to American markets, European nations experienced difficulty raising the capital needed to repay wartime loans. Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes, preferring - an economic to a political solution, invited Charles G. Dawes, a Chicago banker, to represent the United States as head of an international...