Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their...

Existing formal models of the relationship between trade policy and regulatory policy suggest the potential for a regulatory race to the bottom. WTO rules and disputes, however, center on complaints about excessively stringent regulations. This paper bridges the gap between the existing formal...

U.S. safeguard actions have run into problems with the WTO's Panel and Appellate Body reviews for failing to ensure that injury caused by non-import factors is not attributed to imports. This paper reviews the subtle legal and economic differences between U.S. trade law (Section 201) and the...

This paper assesses the place of active trade policy in U.S. industrial change.The growing role of imperfectly competitive multinational corporations provides new arguments for more active U.S. trade policy, as does an increased social consensus that governments should insure what markets do...

This paper reviews the history of bilateral trade negotiations between Taiwan and the U.S. The question posed at the outset is: does bilateralism enhance or jeopardize multilateralism? The U.S.-Taiwan experience seems to suggest a grossly negative answer. Bilateral negotiations for market...

We consider the design and implementation of international trade agreements when: (i) negotiations are undertaken and commitments made in the presence of uncertainty about future political pressures; (ii) governments possess private information about political pressures at the time that the...