6 - Robotics, Superconductors, and Wheat
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
Summary
This book's theory offers new insights into the strategic-trade rivalries in civil aircraft, semiconductors, and high-definition television. These cases are important to get right, not only because the three industries are especially salient and widely interpreted through the lenses of the competing explanation, but because they provide sufficient variation on the book's independent variables, and thus put the theory through its paces. Still, it is useful to push the theory a bit further, taking a look at additional cases that it should be able to explain, and cases it should not be expected to explain. This chapter revisits the scope of the book's argument by offering a brief look at three additional cases: robotics, superconductors, and wheat. Robotics and superconductors are emerging high-technology industries offering a variety of traded products. The book's theory should thus shed light on how these commercial rivalries are taking shape. Wheat is beyond reach of the book's theory, but for reasons it can fully explain. Wheat is of interest to strategic-trade theorists because export subsidies are argued to have brought the United States and the European Community (EC) to the brink of a trade war. If the book's theory is correct, however, the U.S.-EC wheat rivalry should bear little resemblance to the other cases in this study, since the factors privileging national interest considerations in high-technology trade are not at work in this case. As a result, a survey of the political economy of protection in wheat promises to be especially instructive in framing the scope of the book's theory.
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- Trade WarriorsStates, Firms, and Strategic-Trade Policy in High-Technology Competition, pp. 122 - 140Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999