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Cover -- Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Tables and Figures -- Preface -- 1. Ideas, Institutions, and the Politics of Protectionism -- 2. Generation and Selection: Antebellum Ideas, Politics, and the Tariff -- 3. Institutionalization: Putting Protectionism in Place, 1870-1930 -- 4. Reforming Institutions: The Liberalization of Trade Policy -- 5. The Pattern of Protectionism: Conflicting Rules, Conflicting Incentives -- 6. Ideas and American Foreign Policy -- Index.

Democratic governance, liberal values, and the open trading regime are facing interconnected existential challenges. For most of the post-WWII period, they were "legs to the same stool." Today, the connections among the three have frayed, and this has implications for the future of the liberal international economic order. While the trade regime successfully incorporated smaller autocratic states, the rise of China and increasing tension among signatories to the WTO has challenged the rule-based trading system. This essay argues that even with these divisions among the memberships, all trading nations, including China, need the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/WTO. Trade requires market predictability; exporters and their home governments require some means to adjudicate conflict. The GATT/WTO remains the best, and perhaps the only, organization that can facilitate such coordination and finesse the changing nature of the international system to assure an open world economy.

As the World Trade Organization (WTO) begins its third decade, its future is uncertain. The initial expectation that the WTO would be the fulcrum for future international trade agreements has not been met. At best, its tenure has had mixed results. This review addresses the political consequences of WTO membership, focusing on the rules and norms of the regime and why they have become less functional over time; looks at the effectiveness of the WTO and the dispute settlement system in encouraging trade and compliance with agreements; and offers some general thoughts on the impact of shifting mass opinion on the virtue of trade agreements and other stumbling blocks the WTO faces.

While scholars have written much about the role played by international institutions in cooperative behavior among nations, they have not examined the domestic political motives that may lie behind nations' decisions to join such organizations. Two-level games analysis provides a framework for studying domestic politics not as a constraint upon nations that enter into international agreements but as a catalyst for nations to enter into agreements. The dispute settlement procedures of the North American Free Trade Agreement and its predecessor, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, offer an empirical illustration of this point.

Analyzes US domestic political reasons for entering into apparently unfavorable dispute settlement procedures with Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the earlier Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSTA).

Since the close of World War II, the United States has supported contradictory trade policies. In manufacturing, the United States has fostered a liberal trade regime, spurning government involvement in market transactions. In agriculture, it has sanctioned policies of import restrictions, export subsidies, and import fees. This variation is rooted in decisions that were made in the 1930s and institutionalized in the 1940s. In the wake of the Great Depression, policymakers concluded that state intervention helped agriculture and hurt industry. This article argues that the choice of government policy and its appropriateness to the economic problems faced by each sector reflect the accepted knowledge at the time. Neither liberalization nor subsidization was inevitable; both were economically viable options. However, central decision-makers made choices that were often based on inaccurate beliefs about the utility of different policy options.

Nowhere is America's hegemonic decline more evident than in changing trade patterns. The United States trade balance, a measure of the international demand for American goods, is suffering historic deficits. Lowered demand for American goods has led to the under-utilization of both labor and capital in a growing number of traditionally competitive American industries. Conversely, Americans' taste for foreign goods has never been so great. Japanese cars, European steel, Third World textiles, to name a few, are as well produced as their American counterparts and arrive on the U.S. market at a lower cost.

Origin and scope of legitimate claims for protectionism; based on conference paper. Contents: Understanding protectionism; The role of the state; The defense of fair trade; The idea of trade adjustment.

Domestic support for a liberal commercial policy in the U.S. rests on a commonly accepted set of rules and norms. These rules and norms, best characterized as a defense of free and fair trade, arise from two different traditions. The first originated as a political reaction to high trade barriers preceding the Great Depression. Central decision makers took as a lesson from the depression period that short-term political forces should not determine the level of state intervention into the market. The second, to protect against unfair trade, emanates from a long history of state support for industries that claim foreign producers are pursuing unfair predatory practices. Established in statute before the Depression, these rules did not fundamentally change in the postwar period. Together, these decision rules are used to interpret American trade protectionism.