Opening America's Market

U.S. Foreign Trade Policy since 1776

Bibliographic Data

ID9829045
AuthorsRichard N Cooper (corresponding author), Alfred E Eckes
Year1995
Volume74
Issue5
Pages163
Publication date1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueForeign Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-7120 • E-ISSN: 2327-7793
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/20047316
OpenAlexW2802134174
LanguageEN
Citations received17

Despite the passage of NAFTA and other recent free trade victories in the United States, former U.S. trade official Alfred Eckes warns that these developments have a dark side. Opening America's Market offers a bold critique of U.S. trade policies over the last sixty years, placing them within a historical perspective. Eckes reconsiders trade policy issues and events from Benjamin Franklin to Bill Clinton, attributing growing political unrest and economic insecurity in the 1990s to shortsighted policy decisions made in the generation after World War II. Eager to win the Cold War and promote the benefits of free trade, American officials generously opened the domestic market to imports but tolerated foreign discrimination against American goods. American consumers and corporations gained in the resulting global economy, but many low-skilled workers have become casualties. Eckes also challenges criticisms of the 'infamous' protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which allegedly worsened the Great Depression and provoked foreign retaliation. In trade history, he says, this episode was merely a mole hill, not a mountain. |A former U.S. trade official provides a critique of U.S. trade policies over the last 60 years, placing them within full historical perspective. (Please see cloth edition published 9/95.)

Economic history · Economics · Economy · Foreign policy · International economics · International trade · Political science · Politics · Global trade and economics · Law

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