For a period of more than three years, from spring 1985 through the summer of 1988, the U.S. Congress labored hard to come to terms with the nation's staggering trade deficit. Since the voluminous ‘Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988’ was passed into the law, much of the ensuing policy debate has focused on whether or not this legislation is protectionist in nature. Far less attention has been given to an issue which deserves at least as much attention: What lessons regarding the future of economic policy making can be drawn from this lawmaking experience?

A Major Case of Legislative Miscarriage?

An argument can be made that, after all the agitation, commotion, and self-flagellation which went into the legislative exercise, the one tangible result of the 1988 Trade Act was the preservation of the status quo ante. Viewed in a critical light, one could go further and argue that what really happened was the performance of a national rite. This rite involved a large group of players who each invested vast amounts of political energies into the effort of making a new trade law. The problem was that their inputs traveled along largely predetermined paths and primarily satisfied the actors' symbolic needs, while it only obscured a national policy issue urgently awaiting resolution.

As the standard textbook of American politics has it, Congress is to respond to every pressure group knocking at its door. Members indeed introduced a myriad of provisions which covered every angle of trade policy, from the regulation of imports of aluminum, titanium, sugar and photo albums down to the outright prescription of world market shares as well as of interest and exchange rate policies abroad.