Opening America's Market: U.S. Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776 (Luther Hartwell Hodges Series on Business, Society and the State) - Softcover

Eckes, Alfred E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807848115 ISBN 13: 9780807848111

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999

Synopsis

Despite the passage of NAFTA and other recent free trade victories in the United States, former U.S. trade official Alfred Eckes warns that these developments have a dark side. Opening America's Market offers a bold critique of U.S. trade policies over the last sixty years, placing them within a historical perspective.

Eckes reconsiders trade policy issues and events from Benjamin Franklin to Bill Clinton, attributing growing political unrest and economic insecurity in the 1990s to shortsighted policy decisions made in the generation after World War II. Eager to win the Cold War and promote the benefits of free trade, American officials generously opened the domestic market to imports but tolerated foreign discrimination against American goods. American consumers and corporations gained in the resulting global economy, but many low-skilled workers have become casualties.

Eckes also challenges criticisms of the 'infamous' protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which allegedly worsened the Great Depression and provoked foreign retaliation. In trade history, he says, this episode was merely a mole hill, not a mountain.

About this title

Book Description:

"In a perceptive analysis of U.S. trade policy since 1776, Eckes destroys some of the myths about free trade. He demonstrates the inaccuracy of assertions that Smoot-Hawley caused or exacerbated the Great Depression and shows how perceived security needs in recent years have led to a one-sided giveaway of the U.S. market and U.S. manufacturing jobs."--Herman Starobin, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union

From the Back Cover:

Despite the passage of NAFTA and other recent free trade victories in the United States, former U.S. trade official Alfred Eckes warns that these developments have a dark side. Opening America's Market offers a bold critique of U.S. trade policies, concentrating on the evolution of those policies over the last sixty years and placing them within a broad historical perspective. While many believe the United States rose to world leadership on the strength of its commitment to free trade, Eckes shows the facts are quite different.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0807848115
• ISBN 13: 9780807848111
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 424