In our increasingly globalized world, U.S. trade policy stands at the intersection of foreign and domestic affairs. This book explains trade policy in terms of domestic politics, presenting a concise account of its origins and political significance.
Although trade policy is a component of foreign policy, Philip A. Mundo explains how it is rooted in the domestic policy process and carries with it enormous implications for domestic affairs. He reviews the growing importance of trade policy since World War II — particularly over the past twenty years — and shows how recent policies like NAFTA are shaped by the domestic agenda.
Mundo explains trade policy as the product of a three-stage process comprising agenda setting, program adoption, and implementation. He reviews this process in terms of the ideas that inform trade policy, the interests that seek to influence it, and the institutions that shape it. He also addresses the importance of specific measures, such as administrative relief and trade sanctions.
This book distills the essence of the trade policy process into a concise, innovative framework accessible to students and general readers. With the growing importance of trade policy, it makes explicit many of the subtleties surrounding policymaking while fully explicating the legal and international context in which trade operates.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Historical Overview of Trade Policy
3. The Trade Debate and the Domestic Policy Process
4. Domestic Politics and the GATT
5. The North American Free Trade Agreement
6. The Politics of Administrative Relief
7. Steel, Automobiles, and Semiconductors
8. Conclusion
Reviews
"Provides an excellent overview of major controversies in U.S. trade policy debates from the 1930s to the present. . . . It will be very useful as a supplementary text in undergraduate courses on U.S. foreign policy and international political economy. Highly recommended."—Jeffrey Hart, Indiana University
About the Author
Philip A. Mundo is a professor of political science at Drew University and author of Interest Groups: Cases and Characteristics (Nelson-Hall, 1992).
