There is a broad consensus that the gold standard was a key element in explaining the Great Depression and the crisis that hit the world economy in the 1930s, spreading protectionism. Against this backdrop, countries had greater difficulty in restoring their external accounts, if needed. Italy in this period represents a perfect case study of a detailed complex of measures taken to defend the country's gold reserves. The devaluation of the currency was one of the interventions in an attempt to rebalance a structural deficit in the trade balance, which was an important part of this problem. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative sources, some unpublished, we will analyse the composition of the Italian trade balance before and after the realignment of the lira and attempt to demonstrate why monetary leverage was not enough to rebalance the external deficit. Given the structure of international trade and widespread protectionism, a complex interplay of factors helps explain the persistent precariousness of Italian external accounts, despite a partial improvement in the years preceding the Second World War.

广泛的共识是，黄金标准是解释1930年代大萧条和危机席卷世界经济，传播保护主义的关键因素。在这种背景下，如果需要，各国在恢复其外部帐户方面将面临更大的困难。在此期间，意大利代表了为捍卫该国黄金储备而采取的一系列详细措施的完美案例。货币贬值是试图重新平衡贸易平衡中结构性赤字的干预措施之一，这是该问题的重要组成部分。混合使用了定量和定性资源，其中一些尚未发布，我们将分析里拉调整前后的意大利贸易差额构成，并试图证明为什么货币杠杆不足以重新平衡外部赤字。考虑到国际贸易的结构和广泛的贸易保护主义，尽管第二次世界大战之前的几年有所改善，但复杂的因素相互作用有助于解释意大利对外账户的持续不稳定。