Inside International Trade Policy Formulation: A History of the 1982 US-EC Steel Arrangements

This book describes in detail the negotiation of the 1982 U.S.-E.C. Steel Trade Arrangements, providing all the necessary background information including the first authoritative post-mortem of the Steel Trigger Price Mechanism. Levine shows how the 1982 Arrangements evolved from an interplay of U.S. laws defining and enforcing fair trade, economic and industrial developments, U.S. and European domestic politics, international relations, and simple economic self-interest. The author contends that the U.S. steel industry was able to use leverage created by a judicialized system of trade dispute settlement to force the U.S. Government to accept a political system of import protection that it would otherwise have refused.