In 1930 the United States adopted one of the most protectionist trade bills in its history, and this is widely seen as representative of American leadership in the global turn toward economic nationalism. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was the culmination of 150 years of American protectionism, with mild reductions before the Civil War but a general record of having some of the world's highest trade barriers.

Yet within a few short years—from 1945 by most accounts, as early as 1934 by others—the United States was leading the world toward the most sweeping and long-lasting era of trade liberalization in modern history. While the stated American commitment to open world trade has certainly not been unconditional, in most instances the United States remains a bulwark of the contemporary liberal commercial order.

How did this striking transformation, from one of the world's leading protectionist nations to one of its principal free traders, come about? This is the question that Nitsan Chorev asks in Remaking U.S. Trade Policy, and to which she provides a compelling set of answers.

Chorev, a sociologist at Brown University, focuses on the institutional characteristics of the development of American trade policy. This emphasis mirrors that of other scholars of trade policy in the United States, among whom there is close to a consensus about the importance of institutional changes in American trade policymaking, starting with the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. Contemporary analysis by political scientists and economists focuses on two aspects of this institutional change. First, since 1934 agenda control has generally shifted away from the legislative branch toward the executive branch, as seen by the common use of “fast-track” procedures that limit Congress to voting a presidential agreement up or down. Presidential control of the trade policy agenda tends to bias policy away from the preferences of the more protectionist Congress. Second, by incorporating reciprocity into trade policy—most trade policy measures considered today explicitly involve other countries, as opposed to the previous use of a unilateral tariff code—exporters are explicitly mobilized to support more liberal American policies in order to obtain concessions abroad.

Chorev argues that institutional changes have been central to the evolution of American trade policy. She distinguishes three institutional eras. The first, one of “selective protectionism,” runs from 1934 until 1974. In this period, Congress and the President liberalized continually but provided protection to those declining industries most insistent upon it. From 1974 until 1994, “conditional protectionism” reigned, marked by the use of administrative tools—primarily antidumping and countervailing duty findings—to address the demands of protectionist firms and industrial sectors. This gave even more influence to the executive branch, and removed trade policy even farther from direct political influence, thus allowing a continuation of the liberalizing trend. Finally, since 1994, policy has been one of “legalized multilateralism,” in which American participation in the World Trade Organization has largely shaped American trade policy—both by providing recourse to American firms and industries with complaints about foreign policies, and by constraining American government actions.

The story that Chorev tells is one in which internationalist economic interests in the United States have self-consciously shaped the nation's trade policymaking institutions in order to privilege liberalization and restrict the impact of protectionist interest groups. There are two distinctive features to Chorev's argument. The first is that the principal changes in American trade policymaking have been institutional rather than substantive; changes in the way policy is made have determined the content of policy. The second is that internationalist forces have largely dominated the evolution of American trade policy institutions, and have done so with the conscious goal of biasing policy in an internationalist direction.

Remaking U.S. Trade Policy is a thorough, sensible, informed account of the trajectory of American trade policy over the past century. Chorev makes ample and effective use of existing scholarship in political science, economics, and economic history. While her approach may be novel for sociologists, it is very much in the mainstream of contemporary political economy as done by political scientists and economists. Some might hope for a more rigorous presentation of the argument, and for something more than the illustrative use of empirical (especially statistical) evidence. Others might want a more explicit incorporation of the affected interests—on both sides of the issue—into the story. The fact that powerful interests were able to obtain institutional changes that altered American trade policy implies either that there must have been some underlying change in the structure of interests, or in their power, that allowed them to obtain desired changes as they did; this part of the story is not addressed in much detail. Nonetheless, the historical narrative presented is clear and persuasive, and refers amply to evidence marshaled by other scholars.

Nitsan Chorev has written a fine analysis of the development of American trade policy from the 1930s to the present. Remaking U.S. Trade Policy is particularly strong in exploring the institutional evolution of American trade policymaking, and the substantive implications of this evolution. It will be valuable to scholars of the political economy of trade policy; it could also serve as useful supplemental reading for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on the subject.