Review 1: Trade Protection in the United States, by Charles K. Rowley, Willem Thorbecke & Richard E. Wagner (1995)
Reviewed by:
Robert. E. Baldwin,
University of Wisconsin
"This impressive treatise utilizes the Virginia approach to political economy to provide new insights into U.S. trade policies since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. The authors carefully and systematically analyze the behavior of the major players in the formation of trade policies, namely, common interest groups in the private sector, the House and Senate, the president, and the government bureaucracy, in most of the major episodes of trade-policy change over these years and show how the outcomes can be best understood within a political economy framework. Their final conclusion that unilateral free trade should be imposed by amending the Constitution to prevent the government from levying import duties or imposing quantitative restriction on trade should stimulate a fundamental rethinking of U.S. trade policy."
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