1997 Articles

Dumping on Free Trade: The U.S. Import Trade Laws

Stiglitz, Joseph E.

The passage of the Uruguay Round implementing legislation represents a natural opportunity to review the policy goals of the U. S. import trade laws, to assess how well current laws achieve those objectives, and to explore possible reforms. I argue that there is a variety of policy concerns justifying a circumscribed set of import trade statuses. The relevant U. S. laws, however, have largely become divorced from such national welfare considerations and are now too often a mechanism for furtive protectionism. The Uruguay Round effected some (marginal) improvements but left the fundamental structure of the laws unchanged. I discuss possible reforms in the final section of the paper.