If one were to believe the politicians and pundits in the trade press,the world is in midst of a “telecoms revolution,” resulting from (the) deregulation and new competitive opportunities represented by the 1997 World Trade Organisation Agreement on Basic Telecommunications Services. This may be true. Unfortunately, however, the actions of many regulators and industry participants more accurately reveal not a telecoms “revolution” but instead a growing telecoms trade war that is dangerously close to spiralling out of hand. In this book, Naftel and Spiwak review U.S. and European competition and regulatory initiatives post-WTO and provide both a useful roadmap to today's U.S., EU and WTO telecoms regulation and an examination of various case studies to illustrate their points. In so doing, the authors discover unfortunately the sad reality that, despite the political rhetoric, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have eschewed innovative and indeed productive solutions to create a market structure conducive to long-term competitive rivalry. Instead, the authors demonstrate that current policies reveal a growing cynicism towards the maximisation of consumer welfare that will be difficult - if not outright impossible- to remove.

Focusing on the conflicts between the United States and Brazilian governments over Brazil's efforts to develop a local computer industry, High-Tech Trade Wars examines the political struggle between governments and multinational corporations in today's global economy.Sara Schoonmaker uses the technology industry to delve into one of the key political conflicts of our time: the construction of a free trade regime determined to open markets around the world to global capital, and attempts by Latin American, African, and other governments to resist this process. The Brazilian computer case is a prime example of a nationalist effort to promote local growth of a key high-technology industry—an effort that was eventually dismantled under the pressures of what Schoonmaker views as part of a broader process of neoliberal globalization.High-Tech Trade Wars presents a multidimensional view of the globalization process, where economic changes are shaped by political struggle and cultural discourse. It includes interviews with Brazilian industrialists and state officials involved with implementing and, eventually, dismantling Brazil's informatics policy, and discussions of grassroots-level protests organized against neoliberal globalization during the recent WTO meetings in Seattle and Davos, Switzerland.

Ten years ago, the United States stood at the forefront of the Internet revolution. With some of the fastest speeds and lowest prices in the world for high-speed Internet access, the nation was poised to be the global leader in the new knowledge-based economy. Today that global competitive advantage has all but vanished because of a series of government decisions and resulting monopolies that have allowed dozens of countries, including Japan and South Korea, to pass us in both speed and price of broadband. This steady slide backward not only deprives consumers of vital services needed in a competitive employment and business market—it also threatens the economic future of the nation. This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Using the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBC Universal as a lens, Crawford examines how we have created the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago. In the clearest terms, this book explores how telecommunications monopolies have affected the daily lives of consumers and America's global economic standing.

Originally published in 1992 this book charts the global restructuring of telecommunications industries away from the monopoly structures of the past towards increased competition, deregulation and privatization. The book's authors are international policy-makers and scholars, who examine the regulatory environment within a theoretical and historical context. The book looks at the roots of regulatory and legislative changes by discussing individually the countries at the forefront of the revolution: the UK, France, Germany, Japan and the United States. It examines the impact of new technology for consequences of change in trade and government policies.

"This is a very important book."--Martin Wolf, Financial TimesA provocative look at how today's trade conflicts are caused by governments promoting the interests of elites at the expense of workers Longlisted for the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award "Worth reading for [the authors'] insights into the history of trade and finance."--George Melloan, Wall Street Journal Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past thirty years. Across the world, the rich have prospered while workers can no longer afford to buy what they produce, have lost their jobs, or have been forced into higher levels of debt. In this thought-provoking challenge to mainstream views, the authors provide a cohesive narrative that shows how the class wars of rising inequality are a threat to the global economy and international peace--and what we can do about it.

This study of American trade policy addresses two puzzles associated with the use of aggressive bargaining tactics to open foreign markets. First, as the country with greater power and resources, why has the United States achieved more success in extracting concessions from some of its trading partners than others? Second, why is it that trade disputes between democratic and authoritarian states do not more frequently spark retaliatory actions than those between democratic pairs? Ka Zeng finds answers to both of these questions in the domestic repercussions of the structure of trade between the United States and its trading partners, whether the United States has a competitive trade relationship with its trading partner, or whether trade is complementary. This book offers practical policy prescriptions that promise to be of interest to trade policymakers and students of international trade policy. Ka Zeng is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.