Bell Act

The Bell Trade Act was passed by the United States Congress in 1946 to establish the conditions for independence of the Philippines.

This Act gave the Philippines $800 million in war damages in exchange for free trade provisions. These provisions included a waiver of all import duties on goods shipped by America to the Philippines and equal access by Americans to Filipino natural resources. This Act, which both Congress and the Philippines approved, also pegged the Filipino currency (the peso) to the American dollar and prohibited the Philippines from selling products that might "come into substantial competition" with U.S.-made goods. For those reasons Filipino nationalists criticized the law as American interference in their sovereignty.

In 1955, the Laurel-Langley Agreement modified this law on terms more favorable to the Philippines.