The Political Economy Of Protection

This book examines how trade policy is determined in democratic countries, and illustrates how protectionist policies are engendered by political processes that allow groups to pursue their own interests.

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.

The Political Economy of Protection explains why countries, especially developing countries, change their trade policies over the course of history. It does so through an interdisciplinary approach, which borrows analyses from both political science and economics. While the central focus of this book is to explain historical changes in trade policy in one country, Chile, it is broadly relevant for students, scholars, and trade specialists interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the politics and economics of international trade. Given the intensifying public debates about the benefits of globalization, the author provides a uniquely rigorous yet interdisciplinary analysis of the forces that shape trade policy decisions, not just in Chile, but throughout the world.

The Political Economy of Protection explains why countries, especially developing countries, change their trade policies over the course of history. It does so through an interdisciplinary approach, which borrows analyses from both political science and economics. While the central focus of this book is to explain historical changes in trade policy in one country, Chile, it is broadly relevant for students, scholars, and trade specialists interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the politics and economics of international trade. Given the intensifying public debates about the benefits of globalization, the author provides a uniquely rigorous yet interdisciplinary analysis of the forces that shape trade policy decisions, not just in Chile, but throughout the world.

Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.

Over the past two decades there has been a gradual but fundamental change in the nature of trade protection. Even as international negotiation has succeeded in reducing tariffs to low levels, national governments have resorted to a range of increasingly intricate policies to protect their domestic industries from foreign competition. Direct quantitative restrictions on international trade have become particularly widespread. Such nontariff barriers often have very different effects from tariffs and require careful analysis in their own right. This book presents a systematic overview of the modern theory of trade protection. The material in the book divides naturally into four sections. The first section covers trade restrictions in competitive markets, the second trade restrictions and imperfect competition, the third the political economy of trade protection, and the fourth the theory of policy reform. The presentation makes extensive use of diagrams, with the more difficult mathematics included in six appendixes.

Conventional wisdom holds that free trade is economically beneficial to nations. But this does not prevent industries and interest groups from lobbying their governments for protection, which creates a fear of electoral backlash among politicians hoping to promote free trade. The Limits of Protectionism demonstrates how governments can attain those economic benefits while avoiding the political costs.Michael Lusztig's theoretical model focuses on a process by which protectionists can be pushed to restructure and compete in a global economy. In this process, a small cutback in domestic protection leads to lost market shares at home; producers must then turn to overseas exports, and, as the size of foreign profits grow, former protectionists become active advocates for more and greater free trade opportunities.In a wide-ranging array of case studies—from nineteenth-century Britain to Depression-era United States to contemporary New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, and Mexico—Lusztig reveals that, if skillfully handled, governments can eliminate the obstacles to free trade and enjoy continued economic growth without fear of protectionist groups seeking revenge at the ballot box.

In this book, Achim Korber carefully examines the influence of environmental policy on trade policy. He explores environmental protectionism and models it using public choice theory. The author focuses on: a theoretical analysis of ecological protectionism and the potential misuse of environmental regulation as a tool to gain competitive advantage a comprehensive case study on the tuna-dolphin cases of the GATT/WTO. The study reveals that the US legislation was not - as it was widely perceived - a victory for the environmentalists but for the billion dollar industry of the US tuna canneries an in-depth literature survey on various approaches to protectionism including an analysis of lobbying models including the contest-success function. P>The Political Economy of Environmental Protectionism, with its wealth of new material, will be of great interest to environmental, political, and trade economists as well as policymakers and researchers.