American Trade Politics [And Supplement]

?American Trade Politics is the most influential and widely read analysis of the US trade policymaking system. In the third edition of this winner of the American Political Science Association's Gladys Kammerer award for the best book on US national policy, Destler extends his original analysis to assess the politics of the extraordinarily contentious debates over NAFTA and the Uruguay Round. He explains how free traders overcame the opposing forces represented by H. Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Ralph Nader to secure congressional approval for the two most important US trade agreements in the postwar period. The liberal trade regime survived these latest challenges, but Destler nevertheless argues that there is a need for reform of the policymaking system in the 1990s to advance US-led free trade negotiations in the Western Hemisphere and the Asia Pacific as well as future rounds of global liberalization.

The supplement, The New Politics of American Trade: Trade, Labor and the Environment, by I.M. Destler and Peter J. Balint, reexamines the landscape of trade politics. It shows how trade advocates and labor and environmental skeptics differ significantly in both their substantive views and their political and organizational cultures. The authors demonstrate how this new challenge differs from that of traditional trade protectionism, likening it instead to the debate a century ago over whether and how to regulate American capitalism for social purposes. The analysis leads to a set of recommendations aimed at constructive compromise and a new political foundation for US trade policy leadership.