Irwin on Chorev, _Remaking U.S. Trade Policy: From Protectionism to Globalization_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (January 2008)

Nitsan Chorev, _Remaking U.S. Trade Policy: From Protectionism to 
Globalization_. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. xii + 242 pp. 
$42.50 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8014-4575-0.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Douglas A. Irwin, Department of Economics, 
Dartmouth College.


In recent years, political scientists (such as I. M. Destler, Sharyn 
O'Halloran and Michael Hiscox), economists (Robert Baldwin), and 
historians (Alfred Eckes, Thomas Zeiler) have studied the shift in 
U.S. trade policy from high protective tariffs in the early twentieth 
century to lower tariffs and even "free trade" agreements in the late 
twentieth century. With this book, a sociologist, Nitsan Chorev (an 
assistant professor at Brown University), has now entered the fray.

In _Remaking U.S. Trade Policy_, Chorev argues that globalization did 
not arise simply because economic obstacles to greater integration in 
trade and finance eroded over time. Rather, there was an important 
political component to globalization because legislative and policy 
barriers to integration were systematically dismantled. Chorev argues 
that "advocates of free trade prevailed in the struggle with 
protectionists by manipulating the institutional arrangements 
governing trade policy formation and implementation, replacing 
institutional arrangements that favored protectionism with new ones 
that favor a more internationalist orientation."

Chorev identifies three such institutional shifts in U.S. trade 
policy since the early 1930s. First, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements 
Act of 1934, which eventually led to the General Agreement on Tariffs 
and Trade in 1947, introduced a period of what she calls "selective 
protectionism," i.e. a general reduction in trade barriers except for 
politically powerful import-sensitive sectors. Second, the Trade Act 
of 1974 strengthened the laws governing trade remedies under the 
jurisdiction of the executive branch and introduced a regime of 
"conditional protectionism," i.e., certain statutory requirements had 
to be met for firms to receive protection from imports. Third, the 
creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995 established a regime 
of "legalized multilateralism" wherein the trade policies of all 
countries operated under a single legal framework, complete with a 
judicial dispute settlement mechanism. Each of these institutional 
transformations shifted U.S. policy in the direction of more open 
trade: "each new institutional regime led to the further exclusion of 
protectionist voices from the process of decision making" and hence 
"today's protectionist sentiments pose little threat to the 
durability of economic globalization and the future expansion of 
economic practices."

The book is very well organized around these concepts. Chapters 1 and 
2 outline the political basis for economic globalization. Chapter 3 
examines selective protectionism during the 1934-1974 period. Chapter 
4 deals with the origins of conditional protection, which 
characterized the period from 1974 to 1994 and is covered in chapter 
5. Chapter 6 examines legalized multilateralism from 1994 to 2004.

The organizational triad of selective protectionism, conditional 
protectionism, and legalized multilateralism is a useful way of 
thinking about these periods. The book is a good introduction to this 
important policy shift (although not as exciting as Destler's 
_American Trade Politics_.) In the end, however, the book does not 
reveal much that is new to those familiar with these periods in trade 
policy history. While chapter 3 draws mainly on secondary sources, 
Chapter 4 (on the period just before 1974) brings out interesting new 
archival evidence on thinking about trade policy in the Nixon 
administration. In addition, Chapter 5 relies on archival evidence 
from the Ford and Carter administrations. While useful to 
specialists, the new archival evidence does not really change our 
understanding or interpretation of what trade policy was all about 
during these years.

The book is well written but does not depart from the standard 
storyline established by others. The greatest disappointment to this 
reader was the hope that the discipline of sociology might add a new 
perspective on the policy shift, which has been studied in detail by 
political scientists. While the story is nicely told, it does not 
appear that sociologists have any greater insight into (or any 
significantly different understanding of) this change than other 
academic disciplines. For example, Chorev depends upon political 
scientists such as Haggard (1988), O'Halloran (1994), Hiscox (1999), 
Schnietz (2000) and others who have studied the initial 
transformation brought about by the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act 
of 1934 in great detail. Still, Chorev's book provides a good 
introduction for those wishing to understand the important changes in 
U.S. trade policy over the past seventy years.

References:

Destler, I. M. 2005. _American Trade Politics_ fourth edition. 
Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.

Haggard, Stephan. 1988. "The Institutional Foundations of Hegemony: 
Explaining the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934." 
_International Organization_ 42: 91-119.

Hiscox, Michael J. 1999. "The Magic Bullet? The RTAA, Institutional 
Reform and Trade Liberalization." _International Organization_ 53: 
669-98.

O'Halloran, Sharyn. 1994. _Politics, Process, and American Trade 
Policy_. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Schnietz, Karen E. 2000. "The 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act: 
Partisan Institutional Protection of Liberal Trade Policy." _Journal 
of Policy History_ 12: 417-44.


Douglas A. Irwin is Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. His 
book _The Genesis of the GATT_ (coauthored with Petros Mavroidis and 
Alan Sykes) will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2008.

Copyright (c) 2008 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be 
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to 
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the 
EH.Net Administrator (administrator at eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2229). 
Published by EH.Net (January 2008). All EH.Net reviews are archived 
at http://www.eh.net/BookReview.