The paper uses a political economy framework to explain the empirical observation that trade protection is persistent. The assumptions that are shown to generate endogenous tariff persistence in the model are quite plausible: Agents are uncertain about future prices, tariffs are affected by...

The new protectionism threatening the international trading regime is related to significant structural changes in world production that have brought about a decline in the dominant economic position of the United States, a concomitant rise of the European Community and Japan to international...