Why do nations so frequently abandon unrestricted international commerce in favor of trade protectionism? David A. Lake contends that the dominant explanation, interest group theory, does not adequately explain American trade strategy or address the contradictory elements of cooperation and conflict that shape the international economy. Power, Protection, and Free Trade offers an alternative, systemic approach to trade strategy that builds on the interaction between domestic and international factors. In this innovative book, Lake maintains that both protection and free trade are legitimate and effective instruments of national policy, the considered responses of nations to varying international structures.

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

Henry George on free trade! The dismal science is being reclaimed, its swamp lands drained, its jungles cleared, sunshine and free air let in; and the cheap publishers are establishing a prosperous settlement on the bogs where the owl but lately was wont to hoot its wisdom to unlistening ears. The singular success of Mr. George is that he has made Political Economy interesting. A vast deal of heresy might well be pardoned to the author who has set the average man thinking over the urgent problems which were recently supposed to constitute the dreariest of the sciences. No writer on Political Economy has approached him in the power of clothing its dry bones with life. Those who deny him the title of a social architect cannot refuse him the claim of being an economic artist. This book has much of the charm which characterized his first great work. 'Protection or Free Trade' takes a grip of the reader such as 'Progress and Poverty' laid upon hosts of men in all walks of life. Those of us who knew that Mr. George has been for a year or more engaged on a book upon this well-handled theme have awaited its appearance with curious wonder, to see whether this threshed-out subject could take on new life at his touch. The miracle is wrought. He has written a book which, whether it convince the reader or not, cannot fail to interest him, and allure him on through its pages with a zest that never flags from title-page to finis. He is really a master of words. This, however, is because he is a master of ideas. He has his subject well in hand when he begins to write. He thinks clearly, and thus speaks clearly. He knows what he means, sees his thought vividly in the sunshine, and thus puts it upon paper so that he who runs may read. He goes straight for the point which he has in view, and strides along in a good, honest Saxon gait which leaves it easy for the plainest man of the people to keep in his footsteps.

Free trade, indeed economic globalization generally, is under siege. The conventional arguments for protectionism have been discredited but not banished. And free trade faces strong new challenges from a variety of groups, including environmentalists and human rights activists as well as traditional lobbies who wrap their agendas in the language of justice and rights. These groups, claiming a general interest and denouncing free trade as a special interest of corporations and other capitalist forces, have organized large and vocal protests in Seattle, Prague, and elsewhere. Based on his acclaimed Stockholm lectures and picking up where his widely influential Protectionism left off, Jagdish Bhagwati applies critical insights from revolutionary developments in commercial policy theory--many his own--to show how the pursuit of social and environmental agendas can be creatively reconciled with the pursuit of free trade. Indeed, he argues that free trade, by raising living standards, can serve these agendas far better than can a descent into trade sanctions and restrictions. After settling the score in favor of free trade, Professor Bhagwati considers alternative ways in which it can be pursued. Chiefly, he argues in support of multilateralism and advances a withering critique of recent bilateral and regional free trade agreements (including NAFTA) as preferential arrangements that introduce growing chaos into the world trading system. He also makes a strong case for "going it alone" on the road to trade liberalization and endorses the reemergence of unilateral liberalization at points around the globe. Forcefully, elegantly, and clearly written for the public by one of the foremost economic thinkers of our day, this volume is not merely accessible but essential reading for anyone interested in economic policy or in the world economy.