This concise and reader-friendly overview of WTO law is essential reading for anyone needing an introduction to this complex field.

A less-expensive grayscale paperback version is available. Search for ISBN 9781680923018. Business Law I Essentials is a brief introductory textbook designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of courses on Business Law or the Legal Environment of Business. The concepts are presented in a streamlined manner, and cover the key concepts necessary to establish a strong foundation in the subject. The textbook follows a traditional approach to the study of business law. Each chapter contains learning objectives, explanatory narrative and concepts, references for further reading, and end-of-chapter questions. Business Law I Essentials may need to be supplemented with additional content, cases, or related materials, and is offered as a foundational resource that focuses on the baseline concepts, issues, and approaches.

A critical review of recent U.S. trade policies that have failed to enforce sufficient reciprocity and overall trade balance, with suggestions for policies that foster a more balanced and realistic pattern of world trade growth.

"Everybody would agree that fair trade is a good thing. Farmers and suppliers in the developing world should be rewarded for their hard work. Profits should be equitably shared. If only it were that simple. Conor Woodman's explosive new book shows how fair trade has become big business in itself. And, in the process, many of the principles of fair trade have become distorted. Companies sign up to fair trade schemes that yield few practical benefits in order to gain competitive advantage. Money that could go to suppliers gets wasted on bureaucracy. Schemes that would genuinely help get ditched in favour of ones that just look good on paper. To explore the practical effects of all this, Conor Woodman travels the world to witness things at first hand. He visits lobster fishermen in Nicaragua who are dying in their hundreds to keep the restaurant tables of the US well stocked. He visits farmers in the Congo who are failing to benefit from supposedly ethical trading initiatives. And he ventures into war-torn Afghanistan to show what extremes paying lip service to fair trade can lead to."

This is a comprehensive overview of the law and practice of the World Trade Organization. It begins with the institutional law of the WTO, moving eventually to the consequences of globalization. New chapters on Trade in Agriculture and on Government Procurement and Trade.

The law of international trade and the multilateral trading system -- Dispute settlement within the WTO -- The implementation of international trade obligations in the domestic legal order -- The core principles of the WTO : most favored nation and national treatment -- Trade in goods : customs and tariff law -- Non-tariff trade barriers -- General exceptions : trade and civil society -- Safeguards -- Developing countries -- Unfair trade remedies : anti-dumping and countervailing duties -- Trade in services and the GATS -- Foreign direct investment and the TRIMS -- Intellectual property and TRIPS -- Export controls

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 a

Should the United States use retaliatory threats to open foreign markets or deter unfair trading practices? This study reexamines the arguments for and against reciprocity and retaliatory threats in light of actual experience since early 1975, especially the United States' aggressive use of the section 301, special 301, and super 301 provisions of US trade law, which gives the president broad authority to retaliate against "unjustifiable, unreasonable, or discriminatory" foreign trade practices. It analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of these policies and the circumstances under which they are likely to succeed or fail. The study contains an empirical assessment of all section 301 cases concluded between 1975 and 1993. It also provides detailed case studies of various trade conflicts, including the super 301 negotiations involving Japan, Brazil, India, Taiwan, and Korea, financial services disputes with Japan and the European Union, the US-EU conflict over oilseeds, and the US-Japan beef and citrus negotiations. It concludes with an assessment of how the world trading system will change in the aftermath of the Uruguay Round of multilateral negotiations and why it is necessary and desirable for US policy to move from aggressive unilateralism to a strategy of aggressive multilateralism.

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year: “Tells the history of American trade policy . . . [A] grand narrative [that] also debunks trade-policy myths.” —Economist Should the United States be open to commerce with other countries, or should it protect domestic industries from foreign competition? This question has been the source of bitter political conflict throughout American history. Such conflict was inevitable, James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers, because trade policy involves clashing economic interests. The struggle between the winners and losers from trade has always been fierce because dollars and jobs are at stake: depending on what policy is chosen, some industries, farmers, and workers will prosper, while others will suffer. Douglas A. Irwin’s Clashing over Commerce is the most authoritative and comprehensive history of US trade policy to date, offering a clear picture of the various economic and political forces that have shaped it. From the start, trade policy divided the nation—first when Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo on all foreign trade and then when South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over excessive taxes on imports. The Civil War saw a shift toward protectionism, which then came under constant political attack. Then, controversy over the Smoot-Hawley tariff during the Great Depression led to a policy shift toward freer trade, involving trade agreements that eventually produced the World Trade Organization. Irwin makes sense of this turbulent history by showing how different economic interests tend to be grouped geographically, meaning that every proposed policy change found ready champions and opponents in Congress. Deeply researched and rich with insight and detail, Clashing over Commerce provides valuable and enduring insights into US trade policy past and present. “Combines scholarly analysis with a historian’s eye for trends and colorful details . . . readable and illuminating, for the trade expert and for all Americans wanting a deeper understanding of America’s evolving role in the global economy.” —National Review “Magisterial.” —Foreign Affairs