The Baker Plan was launched in October 1985 at the International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting in Seoul, by James Baker, United States Secretary of the Treasury, as a way to combat the international debt crisis.
It was inspired by the idea that China's trade surplus could be used to relieve some of the Third World's problems with debt.[citation needed] The Plan was designed to help highly indebted middle-income countries, i.e., those countries that are not incredibly poor but nevertheless owe a large amount of money. Fifteen countries were mentioned, and ten of those were in Central and Latin America.
The Baker Plan was succeeded by the Brady Plan.