Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Protectionism and world welfare: introduction
- I The new protectionism: an overview
- 2 Fair trade, reciprocity, and harmonization: the novel challenge to the theory and policy of free trade
- 3 The revival of protectionism in developed countries
- 4 Changes in the global trading system: a response to shifts in national economic power
- 5 “Fortress Europe” and retaliatory economic warfare
- II Trade theory, industrial policies, and protectionism
- III Exchange rates and protectionism
- IV The new protectionism in the world economy
- Author index
- Subject index
4 - Changes in the global trading system: a response to shifts in national economic power
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Protectionism and world welfare: introduction
- I The new protectionism: an overview
- 2 Fair trade, reciprocity, and harmonization: the novel challenge to the theory and policy of free trade
- 3 The revival of protectionism in developed countries
- 4 Changes in the global trading system: a response to shifts in national economic power
- 5 “Fortress Europe” and retaliatory economic warfare
- II Trade theory, industrial policies, and protectionism
- III Exchange rates and protectionism
- IV The new protectionism in the world economy
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Introduction
Significant changes are taking place in the global trading system. The growing importance of regional trading arrangements is one such development, as indicated by the negotiation of the North America Free Trade Agreement, the enlargement of the European Community, and the revival of regional trading arrangements in Latin American and Africa. Another is the increased use of non-tariff measures to restrict trade, e.g., the voluntary export-restraint agreements in steel, automobiles, and machine tools, the price fixing agreement in computer chips, and the anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed on a wide range of products, coupled with the greater difficulty of securing trade liberalization through multilateral negotiations, such as the Uruguay Round. Using the threat of closing one's own markets as a means of opening foreign markets is still another major change, as demonstrated by the more frequent use of Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act and the inclusion of a Super 301 provision in the 1988 Trade and Competitiveness Act.
This chapter relates these changes in trade policies to significant structural changes in world industrial production that have brought about a decline in the dominant economic position of the United States, a concomitant rise to international economic prominence of the European Economic Community and Japan, and the emergence of a group of newly industrializing developing countries (NICs).
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- Chapter
- Information
- Protectionism and World Welfare , pp. 80 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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