Download or read book Clashing Over Commerce written by Douglas A. Irwin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-29 with total page 873 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year: “Tells the history of American trade policy . . . [A] grand narrative [that] also debunks trade-policy myths.” —Economist Should the United States be open to commerce with other countries, or should it protect domestic industries from foreign competition? This question has been the source of bitter political conflict throughout American history. Such conflict was inevitable, James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers, because trade policy involves clashing economic interests. The struggle between the winners and losers from trade has always been fierce because dollars and jobs are at stake: depending on what policy is chosen, some industries, farmers, and workers will prosper, while others will suffer. Douglas A. Irwin’s Clashing over Commerce is the most authoritative and comprehensive history of US trade policy to date, offering a clear picture of the various economic and political forces that have shaped it. From the start, trade policy divided the nation—first when Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo on all foreign trade and then when South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over excessive taxes on imports. The Civil War saw a shift toward protectionism, which then came under constant political attack. Then, controversy over the Smoot-Hawley tariff during the Great Depression led to a policy shift toward freer trade, involving trade agreements that eventually produced the World Trade Organization. Irwin makes sense of this turbulent history by showing how different economic interests tend to be grouped geographically, meaning that every proposed policy change found ready champions and opponents in Congress. Deeply researched and rich with insight and detail, Clashing over Commerce provides valuable and enduring insights into US trade policy past and present. “Combines scholarly analysis with a historian’s eye for trends and colorful details . . . readable and illuminating, for the trade expert and for all Americans wanting a deeper understanding of America’s evolving role in the global economy.” —National Review “Magisterial.” —Foreign Affairs

Download or read book Globalization and America s Trade Agreements written by William Krist and published by Woodrow Wilson Center Press / Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Globalization and America's Trade Agreements reviews the theoretical framework as well as provides a historic context of impact of the United States’ complex trade agreements of the past 25 years. William Krist analyzes the issues in the recent rounds of GATT/WTO negotiations and in numerous U.S. free trade agreements and discusses how economists have approached trade policy and how historical experience has affected economic theory. He assesses the effect of trade deals on the U.S. economy, the role of foreign policy in trade negotiations, how trade can affect the economies of developing countries, and how environmental and labor concerns affect trade agreements. Trade has been an essential driver of global growth. Krist shows how trade policy has contributed to that growth and outlines what must be done to ensure it can continue to promote our national objectives. This book will serve as a valuable guide for those unfamiliar with trade policy and provides a challenging critique of trade policy for those already knowledgeable in the field.

Download or read book U S Trade Policy written by William A. Lovett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lovett (Tulane Law School), Eckes (a former commissioner of the U.S. International Commission during the Reagan and Bush I administrations), and Brinkman (international economics, Portland State U.) evaluate the evolution of U.S. trade policy, focusing on the period from the establishment of the Gen

Download or read book Ideas Interests and American Trade Policy written by Judith Goldstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To citizens and political analysts alike, United States trade law is an incoherent conglomeration of policies, both liberal and protectionist. Seeking to understand the contradictions in American policy, Judith Goldstein offers the first book to demonstrate the impact of the political past on today's trade decisions. As she traces the history of trade agreements from the antebellum era through the 1980s, she addresses a fundamental question: What effects do shared ideas about economics—as opposed to national power or individual self-interest—have on the institutions that make and enforce trade law? Goldstein argues that successful ideas become embedded in institutions and typically outlive the time during which they served social interests. She sets the stage with a discussion of the shifting commercial policy of the first half of the nineteenth century. After examining the consequences of the Republican party's decision to promote high tariffs between 1870 and 1930, she then considers in detail the political aftermath of the Great Depression, when the Democratic party settled on a reciprocal trade platform. Because the Democrats did not completely dismantle the existing system, however, the combined legacies of protection and openness help explain the intricacies in the forms of protectionism that political leaders have advocated since World War II. Readers in such fields as political science, political economy, policy studies and law, international relations, and American history will welcome Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy.

Download or read book Myths of Free Trade written by Sherrod Brown and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "U.S. Representative Sherrod Brown - a leading progressive voice in Congress - takes apart free-trade dogma, myth by myth." "Ten years after NAFTA, free-trade policies have not brought prosperity to Mexican workers, and more than one million American jobs have been lost as a result of the agreement. Do free-trade pacts foster democracy? Brown examines the facts. Are fast-track agreements necessary to fight the war on terrorism? Brown dissects the arguments and the evidence."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Politics Process and American Trade Policy written by Sharyn O'Halloran and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relying on the New Economics of Organizations (NEO), or New Institutionalism, Politics, Process, and American Trade Policy shows why conventional models do not adequately describe the formation of American trade policy. Rejecting both the pressure group model and the presidential-ascendancy model, this study's institution-based approach emphasizes the influence Congress has in setting trade policy, connecting theories of institutional design with the procedural details of regulating trade policy. To reach her conclusions, Sharyn O'Halloran uses time series data and econometric analysis to test a set of propositions concerning trade policy. She examines detailed case studies and provides a comprehensive history of the institutions that govern trade policy making. Unlike most scholars who see trade policy as disparate and ad hoc, O'Halloran is able to explain both early and contemporary American trade policy in a consistent and integrated fashion. She argues that a single set of procedures may lead to apparently different outcomes under differing initial conditions; therefore, the key is to identify the common logic, derived from constitutional imperatives, that underlies all policy outcomes.

Download or read book Opening America s Market written by Alfred E. Eckes Jr. and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the passage of NAFTA and other recent free trade victories in the United States, former U.S. trade official Alfred Eckes warns that these developments have a dark side. Opening America's Market offers a bold critique of U.S. trade policies over the last sixty years, placing them within a historical perspective. Eckes reconsiders trade policy issues and events from Benjamin Franklin to Bill Clinton, attributing growing political unrest and economic insecurity in the 1990s to shortsighted policy decisions made in the generation after World War II. Eager to win the Cold War and promote the benefits of free trade, American officials generously opened the domestic market to imports but tolerated foreign discrimination against American goods. American consumers and corporations gained in the resulting global economy, but many low-skilled workers have become casualties. Eckes also challenges criticisms of the 'infamous' protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which allegedly worsened the Great Depression and provoked foreign retaliation. In trade history, he says, this episode was merely a mole hill, not a mountain.

Download or read book U S Trade and Investment Policy written by Andrew H. Card and published by Council on Foreign Relations. This book was released on 2011 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From American master Ward Just, returning to his trademark territory of "Forgetfulness "and "The Weather in Berlin," an evocative portrait of diplomacy and desire set against the backdrop of America's first lost war

Download or read book American Trade Politics written by I. M. Destler and published by Peterson Institute. This book was released on 1995 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Awarded the American Political Science Association's Gladys Kammerer award for the best book on US national policy, American Trade Politics examines how the US policymaking process has enabled the United States to reduce its own import barriers and lead the world toward a more open trading regime. Since the 1970s, enormous political changes, compounded by unprecedented US trade deficits, have brought institutional erosion and some backsliding on trade policy.

Download or read book American Trade Policy written by Anne O. Krueger and published by American Enterprise Institute Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this monograph Anne O. Krueger demonstrates the increasing reliance on bilateral and regional trading arrangements and shows the dangers of departures from multilateralism. Using examples from trading relationships with individual countries (especially Japan and Korea), she shows how the presence of third countries not covered by agreements, market forces, and unanticipated technological and economic events undermine the intended effects of many bilateral arrangements. Ms. Krueger analyzes the North American Free Trade Agreement, and its prospective enlargement to a Western Hemisphere free trade agreement, in light of its impact on the multilateral trading system. While such arrangements can be "GATT plus", they can also be GATT substitutes. The author outlines the ways in which the presence of regional arrangements can detract from the open multilateral trading system, especially at a time when the new World Trade Organization should be the focal point of energy and attention. Ms. Krueger concludes by summarizing the failures of bilateral approaches to achieving their objectives and calling for a renewed commitment to the open multilateral trading system.

Download or read book Reciprocity U S Trade Policy and the GATT Regime written by Carolyn Rhodes and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Wealth of a Nation written by C. Donald Johnson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is entering a period of profound uncertainty in the world political economy--an uncertainty which is threatening the liberal economic order that its own statesmen created at the end of the Second World War. The storm surrounding this threat has been ignited by an issue that has divided Americans since the nation's founding: international trade. Is America better off under a liberal trade regime, or would protectionism be more beneficial? The issue divided Alexander Hamilton from Thomas Jefferson, the agrarian south from the industrializing north, and progressives from robber barons in the Gilded Age. In our own times, it has pitted anti-globalization activists and manufacturing workers against both multinational firms and the bulk of the economics profession. Ambassador C. Donald Johnson's The Wealth of a Nation is an authoritative history of the politics of trade in America from the Revolution to the Trump era. Johnson begins by charting the rise and fall of the U.S. protectionist system from the time of Alexander Hamilton to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. Challenges to protectionist dominance were frequent and often serious, but the protectionist regime only faded in the wake of the Great Depression. After World War II, America was the primary architect of the liberal rules-based economic order that has dominated the globe for over half a century. Recent years, however, have seen a swelling anti-free trade movement that casts the postwar liberal regime as anti-worker, pro-capital, and--in Donald Trump's view--even anti-American. In this riveting history, Johnson emphasizes the benefits of the postwar free trade regime, but focuses in particular on how it has attempted to advance workers' rights. This analysis of the evolution of American trade policy stresses the critical importance of the multilateral trading system's survival and defines the central political struggle between business and labor in measuring the wealth of a nation.

Download or read book Fundamentals Of U S Foreign Trade Policy written by Stephen D Cohen and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cohen, Blecker, and Whitney (professors of international relations and economics at American U.) see the formation of U.S. trade policy is seen as a combination of competing forces of political, economic, and legal factors. They attempt to show how trade policymaking involves reconciling a range of economic goal and political necessities. After reviewing the history of trade policymaking in the United States, they separately examine the three factors before integrating them into a model of political economy that explores both import and export policy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Empowering Exporters written by Michael J. Gilligan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-08-27 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the New Deal, most groups seeking protection from imports were successful in obtaining relief from Congress. In general the cost of paying the tariffs for consumers was less than the cost of mounting collective action to stop the tariffs. In 1934, with the passage of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, all of this changed. The six decades that followed have produced a remarkable liberalization of trade policy in the United States. This occurred despite the fact that domestic politics, according to some of the best developed theories, should have prevented this liberalization. Michael Gilligan argues that liberalization has succeeded because it has been reciprocal with liberalization in other countries. Our trade barriers have been reduced as an explicit quid pro quo for reduction of trade barriers in other countries. Reciprocity, Gilligan argues, gives exporters the incentive to support free trade policies because it gives them a clear gain from free trade and thus enables the exporters to overcome collective action problems. The lobbying by exporters, balancing the interests of groups seeking protection, changes the preferences of political leaders in favor of more liberalization. Gilligan tests his theory in a detailed exploration of the history of American trade policy and in a quantitative analysis showing increases in the demand for liberalization as the result of reciprocity in trade legislation from 1890 to the present. This book should appeal to political scientists, economists, and those who want to understand the political underpinnings of American trade policy. Michael J. Gilligan is Assistant Professor of Politics, New York University.

Download or read book Trade and the American Dream written by Susan Ariel Aaronson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every hour of every day Americans see, smell, taste, or hear goods and services traded between the United States and other nations. Trade issues are front-page news but most Americans know little about the potential impact of global economic interdependence on their jobs, standard of living, and quality of life. In Trade and the American Dream, Susan Aaronson highlights a previously ignored dimension of the United States trade policy: public understanding. Focusing on the debate over the three mechanisms designed to govern world trade—the International Trade Organization (ITO), the General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Trade Organization (WTO)—she examines how policymakers communicate and how the public comprehends trade policy. Since 1947 the U.S. has led global efforts to free trade, and support for freer trade policies and for an international organization to govern world trade has become dogma among policymakers, business leaders, and economists. Relaying on archival research, polling data, public documents, interviews, and Congressional testimony, Aaronson shows that the public also matters in trade policy decisions. If concerns about the implications of economic interdependence remain unaddressed, American trade policy and an international trade organization are vulnerable to a surge of populism and isolationism. While Americans became addicted to imported cars, radios, computers, and appliances, a growing number saw the costs of freer trade policies in the nation's slums, poverty statistics, crime rate, and unemployment figures. Concerns about freer trade policies reached a crescendo in the mid-1990s, especially as Congress debated U.S. participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Aaronson suggests ways to create greater public understanding for the GATT/WTO and international trade. If national trade policy is to play in Peoria, Americans must first understand it.

Download or read book Revisiting U S Trade Policy written by Alfred E. Eckes and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In trade policy, as in many other areas of public policy, decision makers often confront present and future problems with little understanding of how similar disputes were resolved in the past. Too often, busy public officials had no time to write or record negotiating histories. Revisiting U.S. Trade Policy, which is certain to become a classic in the literature of trade negotiations, is just such a record. Built on the oral histories of thirty-five former U.S. trade policymakers -- including Michael Blumenthal, Alonzo McDonald, William Roth, and Robert S. Strauss -- this unique record, prepared for publication by Alfred E. Eckes, revisits some of the most important moments of America's trade liberalization program in the years after World War II. From GATT to the World Trade Organization, these major players look back in candid hindsight at their decisions concerning trade policy and the effects that those decisions had on shaping the new international economic order.

Download or read book The New Politics of American Trade written by I. M. Destler and published by Peterson Institute. This book was released on 1999 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imports pour into the United States, up by 79 percent in six years. The trade deficit more than doubles. The House of Representatives solidly rejects a bill that would liberalize global and regional trade and endorses import quotas for a major manufactured product by a two-to-one margin. Although at first glance these events of the 1990s might sound like past chapters of US trade politics, in fact the political dynamics have changed in significant ways. As the impact of globalization comes into focus, politically important constituencies have begun to resist trade liberalization. Labor and environmental groups in particular, demanding that their concerns be addressed, have succeeded in fracturing the long-standing, bipartisan, protrade coalition in Congress, and in the process have undercut US leadership in liberalizing global trade. This new study reexamines the landscape of trade politics. It shows how trade advocates and labor and environmental skeptics differ significantly in both their substantive views and their political and organizational cultures. The authors demonstrate how this new challenge differs from that of traditional trade protectionism, likening it instead to the debate a century ago over whether and how to regulate American capitalism for social purposes. The analysis leads to a set of recommendations aimed at constructive compromise and a new political foundation for US trade policy leadership.