"In the early 1980s, American complaints about unfair trade
practices began to intensify. Sunrise industries, such as
manufacturers of semiconductors and telecommunications equipment,
joined older complainants, including steel and textile producers,
in seeking more safeguards against international competitors who
priced their products too aggressively or whose governments
subsidized exports or protected home markets. In this politically
charged atmosphere, the U.S. government has devised increasingly
stringent regulatory programs to address the claimed abuses and
distortions. In this book, Pietro Nivola examines the strenuous
effort to combat the objectionable trading practices of other
countries. Through most of the postwar period, Nivola notes,
policymakers had deemed it in the nation's economic and strategic
interests to tolerate asymmetries and infractions in the
international trading order. But that tolerance has been sharply
lowered by heightened sensitivity to inequities, and a growing
conviction that government should intervene, frequently and
forcefully, to ensure a ""level playing field."" The book maintains
that foreign protectionism lower East-West tensions, and alleged
American decline in the face of international competition cannot
fully explain the stiffening regulation of unfair trade. The world
trading system, Nivola contends, is not more restrictive now than
it was earlier. Cries about foreign commercial transgressions in
recent years have remained shrill despite a formidable U.S. export
boom and an improved current account valance. Much of the U.S.
regulatory activity has acquired a political momentum of its own.
The activity has increased not just because global competitive
pressures have generally intensified but because we have developed
more ways and inducement to complain about those pressures. Nivola
cautions that trade regulations now bears too much of the burden
for ameliorating economic imbalances and deficiencies. The tendency
adds to a sense of frustration that fuels demands for additional
regulations. While recognizing the need for an explicit and
responsible trade policy, Nivola concludes that such a policy must
be based, first and foremost, on realistic expectations. Trade
actions need to compliment, not subordinate, a more basic agenda:
improvement in the national rates of saving and investment, better
preparation of the work force, control of runaway health care
costs, less litigation, and more regulatory reform-all of which are
likely to be far more consequential for the nation's long-term
competitiveness and living standards. "
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