Putting tariffs on imported goods or setting other barriers to international trade can be tempting for politicians. They assume that many of their constituents believe that free trade is not fair trade and that other countries aren’t playing by the rules. This belief makes it easy for industry leaders to demand protection for their businesses and their workers—to “put America first.” But Americans should resist the siren calls of protectionism. In this highly relevant protectionism primer, Pierre Lemieux shows what can happen if they don’t. As the author demonstrates, trade between any two countries is fair for the same reasons as exchange between two individuals: it is to the benefit of both. Lemieux carefully refutes the arguments of those who would curtail Americans’ access to the benefits of international commerce—from the claim that we can boost economic growth by reducing imports to the belief that free trade leads to “shipping jobs overseas.” Yes, manufacturing jobs are declining in this country and have been since the 1950s. But, as Lemieux points out, that’s in large part because Americans are making more advanced products more efficiently—that’s our comparative advantage. And this is happening as less-developed countries are producing more labor-intensive, low-tech goods—that’s their comparative advantage. All parties to a trade benefit. Lemieux shows how free trade improves the lives of American consumers, especially the poor. The narrow agenda of the protectionists—to protect a small minority of producers at the expense of millions of their fellow Americans—is the wrong path for an increasingly diverse and complex economy. This concise primer shows you why.

Scholarly survey of current developments, including the Heckscher-Olin theory, and practical applications in commercial policies of Europe and the U.S.A.

During the first three decades following the Second World War, an increasingly open international trading system led to unprecedented economic growth throughout the world. But in recent years, that openness has been threatened by increased protectionism, regional trading arrangements—Europe 1992 and the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement—and setbacks in negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. In Trade and Protectionism, American and East Asian scholars consider the dangers of this trend for the world economy and especially for East Asian countries. The authors look at the current global trading system and at the potential threats to East Asian economies from possible regional arrangements, such as separate trading blocks in the Western Hemisphere and Europe. They cover trade between the United States and Japan, Korea and Japan, and Japanese-East Asian trade policies; trade in agriculture and semiconductors and the frictions that have jeopardized this trade; and direct foreign investment. The contributors round out the work with discussions of the political economy of protection in Korea and Taiwan and political economy considerations as they affect trade policy in general. This is the second volume of the National Bureau of Economic Research-East Asia Seminar on Economics. The first volume, The Political Economy of Tax Reform, also edited by Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger, addresses tax reform in the global economy.

Though globalization has removed commercial walls between countries and implemented new international trade policies, trade barriers still exist. Due to the various political barriers surrounding other countries, the future of world trade has become uncertain. Understanding these barriers and their implications is imperative to implementing successful foreign trade policies. International Trade Policies in the Era of Globalization provides relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings on international trade and improves the understanding of the strategic role of trade policies and their importance in the global economy. The content within this publication contains reports on global trade, trade wars, and foreign policy. This research is designed for policymakers, government officials, economists, business professionals, researchers, and international business students.

This clear, concise summary of the in-depth analyses presented in The Political Economy of American Trade Policy examines the level, form, and evolution of American trade protection. In case studies of trade barriers imposed during the 1980s to help the steel, semiconductor, automobile, lumber, wheat, and textile and apparel industries, the contributors trace the evolution of efforts to obtain protection, protectionist measures, and their results. A chapter assessing the common themes that emerge from the studies concludes that the focus of current trade law is exclusively on the individual protection-seeking industries, with little regard for indirect effects on using industries or for consumers. Reform could usefully take these effects into account. This volume will interest policymakers, business executives, and anyone interested in trade policy formulation and practice.

Milner explores the similarities between the economic conditions of the 1920s and the 1970s, where both Western Europe and the U.S. had high unemploymnet rates and sizeable agricultural and industrial overcapacity. She draws on evidence from six U.S. industries in the 1920s, six U.S. firms in the 1970s, and six French industries in the 1970s, and concludes that in the 1970s both nations had corporations with international market interests than they had in the 1920s. She believes that in modern industrial nations, the corporate sector plays an important role in policy determination, and that any move toward protectionism would be at the behest of large corporations with international interests. ISBN 0-691-05670-6: $29.50.

"Through a combination of text, quotations, cartoons, tables, charts, and graphs, Bhagwati ... looks at the forces for and against protection."--Jacket.