Economist who taught at Lawrence University and had a position in the US Department of Treasury during and after World War 2.
Offered a Treasury position by economist Jacob Viner in 1934. Viner later received an honorary degree from Lawrence in 1941[1].
Primarily known for promoting dollar hegemony at the Bretton Woods Conference by presenting a counter-proposal to John Maynard Keynes' idea. Keynes originally wanted to have an "International Clearing Union" with a third-party currency.
In 1934, he published an economic manuscript arguing against the domestic gold standard (after Keynes) but believed gold-backing was necessary for an international currency. He feared that without it "exchange rates would destabilize, the costs of international trade would escalate, and economies would stagnate or decline" (page 49 of [2]).
White began drafting his plan for international money cooperation around the same time as Keynes started drafting his, in the Summer of 1941 [2].
In early January 1942, began preparing a written proposal for "postwar economic cooperation" after receiving the request from Sumner Welles, Under Secretary for the Rio/Brazil Delegation in the US State Department [2]. The draft for Welles was finished on January 6th, and contained the key elements of the proposal approved later at Bretton Woods. It also contained an argument against having a third-party international currency, claiming it undermines sovereignty and adds unnecessary bureaucracy [3].
His 1940 manuscript "The Future of Gold" provides a more detailed argument against a third-party international currency[3]. He wrote two more drafts in 1942 and 1944, which are now in the Princeton University archives. The New York Times published a report of the papers on November 14 1953, while White was being tried for treason from the Red Scare [4].
In a Spring 1948 manuscript, he criticizes the belief held by American business men that "the United States needed an expanding foreign market" calling it "one of the biggest and most dangerous myths of the century... because that belief contains within it the seeds of both war and depression" [5]
[1] alleged, the sourced on Wikipedia is bad and doesn't confirm en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White
[2] Boughton, James M. "Harry White and the American Creed: How a Federal Bureaucrat Created the Modern Economy (and Failed to Get the Credit)" pg. 144
[3] ibid. pg. 146
[4] White, Nathan I. "Harry White - Loyal American" pg. 217
[5] ibid. pg. 218