Perspectives on the Jurisprudence of International Trade
探讨美国进口监管法律体系的法律化趋势及其成本与收益，分析关税削减与非关税壁垒的演变，对研究贸易法与政策的经济学者和法律学者有参考价值。
I tackle a problem which I believe concerns all our disciplines; the problem of the legal processes involved in international trade regulation, and its various costs and benefits. Much of what I say could be applied to international processes, obligations, and institutions such as the GATT or OECD, but for reasons of time and space I will generally confine myself to the domestic U.S. laws and procedures concerning imports.' During the post-World War II period, there have been two parallel but clear trends in the system of United States regulation for imports. The first has been for the overall dramatic reduction in the level of tariffs since 1945, after the negotiation of the GATT, and the seven tariff and trade negotiating rounds under the auspices of GATT. The second trend has been a gradually accelerating recourse to measures for restraining imports other than normal tariffs, including measures entitled antidumping duties and This trend has particularly accelerated since 1962, and it is instructive to examine the major trade acts of 1962, 1974, and 1979 (the latter being the Trade Agreements Act of 1979, which implemented the results of the Tokyo Round Multilateral Trade Negotiations). The clear trend manifested in those statutes is towards a greater legalization or judicialization of the system. The 1974 act greatly reduced administrative discretion in the application of certain regulatory principles, particularly countervailing duties. It did this by imposing time limits, and in some cases embellishing the requirements for public hearings and other procedures to allow citizen access to the process. The 1979 act went even further in this regard, and also took some major steps in expanding the scope for judicial review of administrative actions. Consequently, as of this writing in 1983, the United States has a remarkably elaborate governmental system for the regulation of imports, including approximately a dozen different formal types of procedures or processes, many of which have explicit statutory procedural requirements calling for public hearings, judicial review, citizen complaint, and much reduced discretion for Executive Branch officials handling these matters. (See my 1977 book.) These include proceedings for escape clause, antidumping, countervailing duty, ? 337 unfair trade actions, ? 301 complaints against foreign government actions, etc. It is said that the U.S. legalistic system of regulating trade is costly, is itself a non-tariff barrier to trade, and lends itself to manipulative use by special domestic interests. Some of this may be true, but a systematic appraisal must examine at least three questions. 1) What are the real costs of the system? 2) What are the benefits of the system? 3) What alternatives to the system exist or are feasible, and what are their costs and benefits? I will therefore discuss those three questions, along with some policy and historical matters.