In a few years, the United States has gone from worrying about Japan's economic might to worrying about its meltdown. The rise and fall of America's 'results-oriented' trade policy towards Japan captures this turnaround.
John Kunkel traces this Japan policy to a crisis in the institutions, laws and norms of the US trade policy regime in the first half of the 1980s. This arose from the erosion of America's post-war international economic dominance (especially vis-à-vis Japan) and the unintended consequences of Reaganomics. The crisis in turn led to the progressive ascendancy of a coalition of 'hardliners' over 'free traders' after 1985.
Kunkel combines research in economics, politics and history - including interviews with key policy-makers - to illuminate this important case study of American trade policy. His book offers theoretical insights and practical lessons on the forces shaping US trade policy at the start of the twenty-first century.
2. Explaing US Trade Policy: A State-Society Approach
3. An American Trade Policy Regime Crisis
4. Hardliners Versus Free Traders
5. The Semiconductor Agreement: A Hardline Landmark
6. Reagan, Bush and Selective Demands for Results
7. The Hardliners Advance
8. Free Traders and Japan's 'Structural Impediments
9. The Revisionist Moment with a Hardliner-in-Chief
10. The Eclipse of the Japan Problem
Biography
John Kunkel is an international trade consultant currently based in Rome. He has worked as an advisor on trade policy to the Australian government and as a consultant to the OECD.
