Economists such as Waddill Catchings, William Trufant Foster, Rexford Tugwell, Adolph Berle (and later John Kenneth Galbraith), popularized a theory that had some influence on Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Tugwell also supported Puerto Rican self-government through the repeal of the Organic Act in 1948, and support for Luis Muñoz Marín’s Popular Democratic Party, the PPD.
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In his youth he gained an appreciation for workers’ rights and liberal politics from the works of Upton Sinclair, James Bryce, and Edward Bellamy.
The book argues that members of FDR's "Brain Trust", including Rexford Tugwell of Columbia University, had connections to the Soviets and their interest in central planning.
After the November 1932 presidential election, he also met with President-elect Franklin Roosevelt, Rexford Tugwell, M. L. Wilson, and Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to discuss the farm policy of the new administration.