This is an invaluable piece of work that, to my knowledge, is not replicated anywhere, even in piecemeal fashion. It should be read by everyone having a stake in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. It fills an historical vacuum in US-EU agricultural trade relationships that has existed for decades. This book provides the context of the past half century, and it will be invaluable for another half century.' - Clayton Yeutter, Former US Trade Representative, Former US Secretary of Agriculture and Senior Advisor at Hogan Lovells, US Tim Josling and Stefan Tangermann's Transatlantic Food and Agricultural Trade Policy traces the past fifty years of transatlantic trade relations in the area of food and agricultural policy, from early skirmishes over farm policies to on-going conflicts over biotech foods and hormone use in animal rearing. The authors take an analytical approach to the causes of transatlantic conflict and the extent to which these trade tensions in agricultural markets have reflected wide differences in policy approaches and levels of support. They explore the role played by international rules, in the GATT, and subsequently the WTO, in disciplining farm price support policies to allow for more open markets. The book also points to possible ways to end five decades of transatlantic trade tensions in the area of food and farm products. Scholars, practitioners and policymakers will find this timely book an invaluable and comprehensive guide to the causes of, and solutions to, the persistent EU-US trade conflicts in agricultural and food policy.

"The Evolution of the Trade Regime" offers a comprehensive political-economic history of the development of the world's multilateral trade institutions, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO). While other books confine themselves to describing contemporary GATT/WTO legal rules or analyzing their economic logic, this is the first to explain the logic and development behind these rules.

The book begins by examining the institutions' rules, principles, practices, and norms from their genesis in the early postwar period to the present. It evaluates the extent to which changes in these institutional attributes have helped maintain or rebuild domestic constituencies for open markets.

The book considers these questions by looking at the political, legal, and economic foundations of the trade regime from many angles. The authors conclude that throughout most of GATT/WTO history, power politics fundamentally shaped the creation and evolution of the GATT/WTO system. Yet in recent years, many aspects of the trade regime have failed to keep pace with shifts in underlying material interests and ideas, and the challenges presented by expanding membership and preferential trade agreements.