International Trade Negotiations And Domestic Politics

In spite of many years of negotiation on trade liberalization, progress seems to have stalled. This book explores why resistance to further market liberalization seems so strong, given that the benefits are seen to outweigh the costs. This volume argues that in order to understand the slow progress of World Trade Organization negotiations, we need to take into consideration the ‘intermestic’ character of trade politics, that is, the way in which international and domestic aspects of politics and policies have been woven together and become inextricably related to each other. This is a general trend in our globalizing world, and one that is most pronounced in the case of trade politics and policy. International Trade Negotiations and Domestic Politics therefore presents an in-depth analysis of institutions, ideas, interests and actors in the interplay between international trade negotiations and national negotiating positions. At the international level the authors focus on the multilateral negotiations within the World Trade Organization, together with the plurilateral and bilateral negotiations on free trade agreements. At the regional and domestic level they analyze the trade politics and policies of two established powers, the European Union and the USA; two rising powers, China and India; and a small industrialized country with an open economy, Norway.

The Domestic Politics of International Trade considers the issues surrounding intellectual property rights in international trade negotiations in order to examine the challenges posed to domestic policy-makers by the increasingly broad nature of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Throughout the book the author demonstrates the importance of domestic politics in understanding the nature and outcome of international negotiations, particularly as they relate to international economic diplomacy. The book looks in detail at the intellectual property negotiations which formed part of the US-Peru and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements and analyses the extent to which public health authorities and other parties affected by the increased levels of intellectual property protection were integrated into the negotiation process. The book then juxtaposes these findings with an analysis of the domestic origins of US negotiation objectives in the field of intellectual property, paying particular attention to the role of the private sector in the development of these objectives. Based on a substantial amount of empirical research, including approximately 100 interviews with negotiators, capital based policy-makers, private sector representatives, and civil society organisations in Lima, Bogotá and Washington, DC, this book offers a rare account of different stakeholders’ perceptions of the FTA negotiation process. Ultimately, the book succeeds in integrating the study of domestic politics with that of international negotiations. This book will be of particular interest to academics as well as practitioners and students in the fields of international law, economic law, intellectual property, political economy, international relations, comparative politics and government.

This book shows how domestic political institutions and the lack of time pressure have an impact on negotiations at the WTO. It provides detailed information on WTO ministerial meetings as well as on the political economy of trade policy in the EU, U.S., Brazil, and Australia.

Looking in detail at US-Peru and US-Colombia FTA negotiations and more specifically at the issues surrounding intellectual property rights, this book seeks to demonstrate the importance of domestic politics in understanding the nature and outcome of international negotiations, in particular as they relate to international economic diplomacy. The book draws on a substantial amount of empirical research including interviews with individuals in Peru, Colombia and the US who were directly or indirectly involved in the negotiation process, focusing on the conflict between giving way to the pressure from the USA to increase intellectual property rights on the one hand, and maintaining public health safeguards on the other. The book demonstrates how the respective structural and institutional characteristics in Peru, Columbia and the USA affected the process and outcome of the respective FTA negotiations, exploring issues such as domestic policy-structures, the centrality of government and the influence of interest groups and industry's lobbying. The book goes on to consider whether including public policy objectives in bilateral trade negotiations can ever be successful given the economic imperatives that provide the basis of such negotiations, or whether such objectives should instead be pursued through multilateral fora such as the World Health Organization.

Preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) play an increasingly prominent role in the global political economy, two notable examples being the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement. These agreements foster economic integration among member states by enhancing their access to one another's markets. Yet despite the importance of PTAs to international trade and world politics, until now little attention has been focused on why governments choose to join them and how governments design them. This book offers valuable new insights into the political economy of PTA formation. Many economists have argued that the roots of these agreements lie in the promise they hold for improving the welfare of member states. Others have posited that trade agreements are a response to global political conditions. Edward Mansfield and Helen Milner argue that domestic politics provide a crucial impetus to the decision by governments to enter trade pacts. Drawing on this argument, they explain why democracies are more likely to enter PTAs than nondemocratic regimes, and why as the number of veto players--interest groups with the power to block policy change--increases in a prospective member state, the likelihood of the state entering a trade agreement is reduced. The book provides a novel view of the political foundations of trade agreements.

To what extent does domestic politics affect the agreement reached in an international trade negotiation? In order to address this question, Christopher C. Meyerson develops an approach to analyzing the relationship between domestic politics and international relations in trade policymaking. This approach is used to analyze both American and Japanese trade policymaking and US-Japan trade negotiations, especially during the GATT Uruguay Round agriculture negotiations that occurred between 1986 and 1994. Meyerson not only develops an innovative approach to the analysis of the relationship between domestic politics and international relations in trade policymaking, but also, using publicly available GATT documents and publications, US Congressional hearings and Japanese-language sources, provides a strong narrative description of the roles of the United States and Japan in the GATT Uruguay Round agriculture negotiations.

A deep and unresolved tension exists within American trade politics between the nation’s promotion of an open world trading system and the operations of its democratic domestic political regime. Whereas most scholarly attention has focused on how domestic politics has interfered with the United States’ global economic leadership, Orin Kirshner offers here an analysis of the ways in which U.S. leadership in the arena of global trade has affected American democracy and the domestic political regime. By participating in multilateral trade agreements, the U.S. Congress has transferred its trade policymaking authority to the president and, through international trade negotiations, from the American state to the GATT/WTO regime. This reorganization of policymaking authority has resulted in the "triumph of globalism," and fundamentally alters the citizen-state relationship assumed in democratic theory. Kirshner illustrates this process through four case studies: The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1945, The Trade Expansion Act of 1962, The Trade Act of 1974, The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, and further examines the impact of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 on the political and institutional structure of American trade politics up to the current period. American Trade Politics and the Triumph of Globalism makes a significant contribution to the study of both international trade and domestic American politics. This is essential reading for students and scholars of trade policy, international political economy, American politics, and democratic theory.

This book develops a new theoretical approach to understanding the role of leadership in trade negotiations. By examining in detail the key role of leadership in the GATT/WTO system, it offers new insights into trade bargaining from the inception of the GATT through to the current WTO Doha Round. David A. Deese makes use of an impressive range and amount of primary material on the GATT/WTO system from a variety of official sources. World Trade Politics will be recommended reading for upper level undergraduate as well as postgraduate and research students, and will be essential reading for scholars of the global trade system.