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Trading Places: Industries for Free Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Helen Milner
Helen Milner
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Abstract

Many scholars expected U.S. trade policy in the 1970s and beyond to look like that of the 1920s and 1930s—i.e., to be marked by widespread and high levels of protectionism. The American market, however, remained relatively open. One central reason was the growth of antiprotectionist sentiment among American firms. Firms now opposed protection because they had developed extensive ties to the international economy through exports, multinational production, and global intrafirm trade. The development of these international ties by the 1970s reduced protectionist pressure by American firms even when they were faced with serious import competition: protection had become too costly. The preferences of these firms also seemed to affect trade policy outcomes, turning them away from protection.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , April 1988 , pp. 350 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1988

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References

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59 Many studies have found that high levels or high rates of increase in import penetration are strongly correlated with high levels of demand for protection and high actual levels of protection. See, for example, Baldwin (fn. 50); Lavergne (fn. 50); Goldstein (fn. 43).

60 For the full story, see Milner (fn. 58), 138–63.

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70 Consistent data series on export dependence and multinationality as a percent of GNP from 1945 on are not available. The export dependence data come from Report of the President's Commission (fn. 46), 36. The data on direct foreign investment come from Feldstein (fn. 7), Table 3.30, p. 240.

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