Baker, James (politician)

Born in Houston in the family of James Addison Baker Jr. and Ethel Bonner Means. He studied at the private school Hill School in Pennsylvania and Princeton University . He received a bachelor's degree in 1952. For two years, he served as a lieutenant in the US Marine Corps , after which he studied at the Law School of the University of Texas , where he joined the student brotherhood of Delta Kappa and received his Juris Doctor degree in 1957. He worked at the Andrews & Kurth, LLP law firm until 1975.

Initially, a Democrat joined the Republican Party and in 1970 led the unsuccessful campaign to elect his old friend George W. Bush to the Senate.

He served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce for the presidential administration of Gerald Ford in 1975 and led his re-election company, which also ended in failure, in 1976. In 1978, Baker tried to run for Texas Chief Attorney.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan was appointed head of the presidential administration. He worked in this position until 1985. In 1984, he led the successful Reagan re-election company and was appointed finance minister in February 1985. September 22, 1985 signed the Plaza agreement between the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Japan under which central banks agreed to devalue the dollar against the Japanese yen and the West German mark.

To solve the problem of the external debt of developing countries, he proposed the Baker Plan , according to which 15 medium-developed countries (mainly Latin American) received new loans from the World Bank , the receipt of which was tied to the mandatory implementation of structural reforms in debtor countries. The plan was adopted at the meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Seoul and was valid until 1988, when it was replaced by another plan.

In 1988, he led the presidential campaign of George W. Bush . In the administration of the new president, he served as secretary of state.

He played an important role in ending the Cold War. On June 1, 1990, in Washington, together with Eduard Shevardnadze, he signed an agreement on the transfer to the United States of the Bering Sea along the Shevardnadze-Baker dividing line .

Recently, James Baker has been dealing with issues related to Iraq, in particular, the issue of Iraqi debts.

On September 25, 2007, along with several other retired US secretaries of state, he signed a letter urging the US Congress not to pass Resolution 106 on the Armenian Genocide . ^[2]

In 1993-2005 - Advisor to Carlyle Group .

Married to Susan Garnett.

• The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989-1992 ( ISBN 0-399-14087-5 ).

• Biography at voltairenet.org
• James Addison Baker Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
• Baker Institute for Public Policy
• C-SPAN Cable Mentions