For the past two decades, trade policy has been high on the American political agenda, thanks to the growing integration of the United States into the global economy and the wealth of debate this development has sparked. Although scholars have explored many aspects of U.S. trade policy, there has been little study of the role played by party politics. With Trading Blows, James Shoch fills that gap. Shoch offers detailed case studies of almost all of the major trade issues of the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton eras, including administrative and legislative efforts to curb auto, steel, and other imports and to open up markets in Japan and elsewhere, as well as free-trade initiatives such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) treaty that concluded the Uruguay Round of international trade talks, the extension of presidential fast-track trade negotiating authority, and the approval of permanent normal trade relations with China. In so doing, he explains the complex patterns of party competition over U.S. trade policy since 1980 and demonstrates the significant impact that party politics has had on the nation's recent trade policy decisions.

For the past two decades, trade policy has been high on the American political agenda, thanks to the growing integration of the United States into the global economy and the wealth of debate this development has sparked. Although scholars have explored ma

Africa's role in the global economy is evolving as a result of new corporate strategies, changing trade regulations, and innovative ways of overseeing the globalized production and distribution of goods both within Africa and internationally. African participants in the global economy, now faced with demands for higher levels of performance and quality, have generated occasional successes but also many failures. Peter Gibbon and Stefano Ponte describe the central processes that are integrating some African firms into the global economy while at the same time marginalizing others. They show the effects of these processes on African countries, and the farms and firms within them. The authors use an innovative combination of global value chain analysis—which links production, trade, and consumption—and convention theory, an approach to understanding the conduct of business. In doing so, Gibbon and Ponte present a timely overview of the economic challenges that lay ahead in Africa, and point to ways to best address them.

With the end of the Cold War, the search for a new international and economic order has begun. In this comprehensive account, Sylvia Ostry provides a critical analysis of an international trade system in the throes of rapid and far-reaching change. With keen historical awareness, Ostry examines the role of key economic power brokers, particularly the United States, in the reconstruction and reconfiguration of an international economy after World War II. She argues that U.S. policy efforts were so successful that they led to an unprecedented renewal of economic growth, living standards, and education levels in postwar Europe and Japan. Ironically, those same policy successes unintentionally fostered the relative decline of U.S. dominance on the world trade scene as the reduction of trade and investment barriers prompted friction and conflict between different kinds of capitalist systems. Identifying the historical and legal issues key to postwar trade policy, Ostry has commandingly charted our economic course through the last half of this century and, perhaps, into the next. "Sylvia Ostry knows this subject as few others do, both as a scholar of international trade issues and a major player in the ongoing negotiations that have created the rules of the trade game. The Post-Cold War Trading System is a fine summary of where we've been and where we ought to be going."—Peter Passell, economic scene columnist for The New York Times