Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 7 › Conversation 007-124

Nixon phone call with Rogers on Wage-price freeze and Gold convertibility

Sunday, August 15, 1971 · 9:50 PM–9:55 PM ET · White House Telephone · 5 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Rogers, William P.Conversation007-124 on Tape 7 (tape position 04:30:08–04:35:12)StartSunday, August 15, 1971 at 9:50 PMEndSunday, August 15, 1971 at 9:55 PMRecording deviceWhite House TelephoneSourceNixon Library record for 007-124 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and Secretary of State William P. Rogers discuss the immediate international and domestic fallout of Nixon's wage-price freeze speech and the suspension of gold convertibility. The two officials review the reactions of various foreign leaders, including Japan's Eisaku Sato and Canada's Mitchell Sharp, while assessing the political advantages of the administration's bold economic shift. Nixon expresses his intent to leverage this position of strength to overhaul the international monetary system and move away from the limitations of the Bretton Woods era.

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Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

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Hello.
Hello.
Secretary Rogers, Mr. President.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Hi, Bill.
That was excellent.
You survived.
That was great.
I think you'll have a... We may not have any friends left in the world, but I was quite conciliatory.
I thought so.
No, I think the world has got to understand that I talked to Sato, and I just finished talking to Mitchell Sharp for two hours away on vacation.
Mitchell Sharp is acting prime minister.
Did you call Heath?
I haven't.
It's the middle of the night.
I hate to wake him up at 4 o'clock in the morning.
Oh, hell no.
So I thought I'd better call the ambassador and tell him that you asked me to speak to the prime minister, but I didn't want to wake him up.
Right.
Good.
And I didn't... Bob thought I shouldn't...
It doesn't affect him too much anyway.
No.
The British aren't too badly affected by this, you see.
It's mainly the Germans and the Japanese, I think.
I think...
I didn't mention on Canada about the business about terminating the auto agreement.
I think we ought to be a little careful about how we phrase that.
I think we could renegotiate it, but I don't think we ought to arbitrarily.
Look, on all these things, now that we're in a position of strength, we can negotiate a lot of things, and they'll be more reasonable.
That's right.
You know, as you probably noted, as you can imagine,
They prepared a draft for me.
It was really a monstrosity.
They wanted to start talking about the International Monetary Fund.
I said, now look, that's the thing nobody's going to sign.
I'm going to put that last.
So I started with peace, Vietnam, jobs, inflation, and then stuck the other end.
But I'll be there.
Don't you agree?
That would have been murder.
Oh, you can't do that.
I thought the end of it was very good, too.
I thought it ended on a high note.
But the, well, first I think that you, you know, as I said the other night when we talked, something had to be done.
And I think doing it in a sort of a dramatic, you know, across-the-board way is...
It affects everybody.
That's right.
It's really, as you note on the foreign economic aid, that covers everything.
That leaves out anything for refugees.
It leaves out anything for military.
Well, that's what we need.
This is manageable.
If you had to put it in, you couldn't... Well, I couldn't cut other things without that.
No, absolutely not.
So there's no problem on that.
We can...
And people love it.
That's right.
They shouldn't, but they do.
That's right.
So I think it's going to have a hell of an effect.
You know, you stop at every Democratic candidate in the papers this morning.
You're out calling for these 12 Republicans.
All of a sudden.
We go far beyond, but they've got a piece of it because we cover the waterfront.
One of the commentators I heard just said right afterwards, he said that this covers really everything that your opponents have been demanding you do.
In a way, it touches everything.
Well, the only one I talked to George Shultz about, the only one that is going to be, I think,
interesting to watch is the reaction on the gold convertibility, because we've never really done it.
No, I know, I know.
Well, we just labored over that, and nobody knows, so let's see what happens.
But on the other hand, what I think this may do is that we'll trigger what we really have needed.
We need a new system.
Bretton Woods was 25 years ago.
We went horsing around, SDRs, none of it's ever worked.
And so let's just ask for the United States
It is 25% of the world to be pulled around by the goddamn Swiss, Belgian, Dutch.
It's ridiculous.
That's right.
And, of course, the Japanese, too, are the worst offenders.
I mean, they're terrible.
And so I think the thing to do is to work with the convertibility and all the rest.
Fine.
They want to talk, but we're not going to be at the...
I said, of course, the American dollar is not going to be the hostage of international speculators.
They're a little demagogic.
Oh, that's true.
And, of course...
Now, what we're really saying to them is let's get the monetary system in order.
Stabilize the dollar.
Stabilize all currencies.
Let's get the currencies in relative positions so that they relate sensibly to each other.
And that's really the situation in Japan.
Sato was a little perplexed.
I wasn't able to tell him what the hell was in it.
It's too broad, so I told them we'd be pulling with them.
You know, I told them it wasn't discriminatory.
I said it wasn't against the nation, but if you want to freak, force them to do the Japanese tour, the Japanese cars, the Germans would do the Japanese tour.
Okay.
Thanks, Mr. Bennett.
Congratulations.
Good night.

NARA Description

On August 15, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and William P. Rogers talked on the telephone from 9:50 pm to 9:55 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 007-124 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 7-124

Date: August 15, 1971
Time: 9:50 pm - 9:55 pm
Location: White House Telephone

The President talked with William P. Rogers.

     Wage-price freeze speech
         -Rogers’ reaction
         -World effect
               -Rogers’ talk with Eisaku Sato
               -Rogers’ talk with Mitchell Sharpe, Acting Prime Minister of Canada
               -Call to Edward R.G. Heath
               -Great Britain
               -Germany and Japan
               -Canada
                     -Automobile agreement
         -Draft
               -International economy
               -Peace
               -Vietnam
               -Jobs
               -Inflation
         -Foreign aid
         -Democratic reaction

          -Television commentators
           -Rogers’ talk with George P. Shultz
               -Gold convertibility
                      -Effect
                           -New international monetary system
                                -Swiss, Belgians, Dutch, and Japanese
                                     -US dollar
                                -Japanese
                                     -Eisaku Sato
                                           -Talk with Rogers

**********************************************************************

[Previous PRMPA Personal Returnable (G) withdrawal reviewed under deed of gift 08/09/2019.
Segment cleared for release.]
[Personal Returnable]
[007-124-w003]
[Duration: 14s]

     William P. Rogers
          -Health
                -Eye
                -Appearance

**********************************************************************

Also recorded on August 16, 1971

  • 007-119 9:39 PM · 16 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at 9:39 pm.
  • 007-120 9:39 PM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford talked on the telephone from 9:39 pm to 9:44 pm.
  • 007-121 9:44 PM · 32 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:44 pm and 9:46 pm.
  • 007-122 9:46 PM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John B. Connally talked on the telephone from 9:46 pm to 9:50 pm.
  • 007-123 9:50 PM · 7 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at 9:50 pm.
  • 007-125 9:55 PM · 7 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at 9:55 pm.
  • 007-126 9:56 PM · 5 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John N. Mitchell talked on the telephone from 9:56 pm to 10:02 pm.
  • 007-127 10:03 PM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and David M. Kennedy talked on the telephone from 10:03 pm to 10:05 pm.

All 88 conversations from August 16, 1971 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 007-124, August 16, 1971. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/007-124 (accessed October 23, 2026).