During the 1971 Nixon shock, U.S. president Richard Nixon ordered a 90-day freeze on wages and prices.
Nixon announced the measure on August 15, 1971, as part of a broader economic program known as the New Economic Policy. The freeze was intended to counter rising inflation, which had become a major political and economic concern in the United States.
The policy also ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold for foreign governments and imposed a temporary 10% surcharge on imports. These measures reshaped the Bretton Woods international monetary system and contributed to the eventual move toward floating exchange rates.
The wage-and-price controls continued in modified phases after the initial 90 days. They did not permanently eliminate inflation, which accelerated again later in the 1970s. The Nixon shock is sometimes confused with the 1973 oil crisis, but the two were separate events.