Domestic Interests and International Obligations

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Foreword

Sooner or later the day is bound to come when the United States will feel as close to its major trading partners of western Europe as many of the European countries now feel toward each other. In one way or another we shall be following the path toward broader international commitments that they have taken in the course of expanding intra-European trade and in moving towards the integration of national states into larger entities. Their experience in reconciling the conflict between these new international commitments and domestic interests that are adversely affected by them is therefore of great interest from the standpoint of the future development of American commercial policy.

A large part of this study is devoted to an examination of the nature of these commitments and of the manner in which domestic interests have been safeguarded in three purely European arrangements—the Organization for European Economic Cooperation's Code of Liberalization, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Economic Community. Considerable attention is given also to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which includes the United States and many other non-European countries.

These trading arrangements have not, so far as the author knows, been previously examined from this point of departure, and the author hopes that the individual chapters dealing with each of them will have some value for those interested in the organizations themselves rather than in the problem of reconciling domestic interests and international obligations. In this connection, however, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that our concentration on difficulties and their resolution often seems to lead us away from the positive aspects of the organizations under study. The exceptions and the escape clauses hold the center of our interest. Furthermore, our attention is focused almost exclusively upon the trade functions of these organizations, a restriction that is especially important in the cases of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community. These limitations of purpose and scope must be remembered because we attempt not only to analyze the contents of the charters of our four organizations but also to describe and appraise the way in which they actually work. Our appraisals may therefore overlook or pass over lightly some of the genuine achievements of the organizations which a more comprehensive study would dwell upon. Our purpose in making these remarks is merely to make clear our point of departure in evaluating the institutions studied herein. Apologies for concentrating on difficulties and exceptions are not necessary. In the first place, we have no desire to search out the weaknesses and failures of important and highly useful institutions simply in order to place them in an unfavorable light. Second, the pejorative connotation usually attached to "escape clauses," the kind of safeguard provision most in the public eye, is not justified in principle. Escape clauses and other safeguarding mechanisms are necessary elements of trade treaties and they can be fashioned so as to play a constructive role in the development of freer world trade.

The chapters other than those dealing with the four trading arrangements mentioned above are brief. An introductory chapter attempts to set out the problem of reconciliation as the author sees it, and three concluding chapters are devoted, successively, to a general outline of alternative safeguarding procedures, to reconciliation policy in Europe and America, and to implications for American policy. These chapters attempt to interpret and to draw certain inferences from the studies of the organizations. Some of the materials were drawn upon for an article which appeared in the March-April 1962 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Virtually all the work was carried out in 1960-61 while the author held a Ford Foundation faculty research fellowship. The study benefited greatly from discussions with many busy and responsible officials who gave generously of their time; over a hundred officers of the four organizations and of the governments which participate in them were interviewed in Geneva, Paris, Luxemburg, Brussels, London, and The Hague. Messrs. Wilfred Beckerman, John Fay, and Joseph Mintzes in Paris were helpful in providing research facilities, and Baron Snoy and Mr. Paul Hatry of Brussels, Professors Raymond Vernon and Seymour Harris of Cambridge, Mass., and Professor Arthur Bloomfield of Philadelphia were among the nongovernmental readers of portions of the manuscript. The author is grateful to them, to the anonymous readers in official positions, to the officials who granted interviews or provided information through correspondence, and to the Ford Foundation, but of course the author alone is responsible for the views and interpretations found in the study. The author takes pleasure also in acknowledging his indebtedness to the library of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, which has a splendid collection of materials on European integration and, what is equally important, an efficient and helpful staff.

Foreword

Sooner or later the day is bound to come when the United States will feel as close to its major trading partners of western Europe as many of the European countries now feel toward each other. In one way or another we shall be following the path toward broader international commitments that they have taken in the course of expanding intra-European trade and in moving towards the integration of national states into larger entities. Their experience in reconciling the conflict between these new international commitments and domestic interests that are adversely affected by them is therefore of great interest from the standpoint of the future development of American commercial policy.

A large part of this study is devoted to an examination of the nature of these commitments and of the manner in which domestic interests have been safeguarded in three purely European arrangements—the Organization for European Economic Cooperation's Code of Liberalization, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Economic Community. Considerable attention is given also to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which includes the United States and many other non-European countries.

These trading arrangements have not, so far as the author knows, been previously examined from this point of departure, and the author hopes that the individual chapters dealing with each of them will have some value for those interested in the organizations themselves rather than in the problem of reconciling domestic interests and international obligations. In this connection, however, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that our concentration on difficulties and their resolution often seems to lead us away from the positive aspects of the organizations under study. The exceptions and the escape clauses hold the center of our interest. Furthermore, our attention is focused almost exclusively upon the trade functions of these organizations, a restriction that is especially important in the cases of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community. These limitations of purpose and scope must be remembered because we attempt not only to analyze the contents of the charters of our four organizations but also to describe and appraise the way in which they actually work. Our appraisals may therefore overlook or pass over lightly some of the genuine achievements of the organizations which a more comprehensive study would dwell upon. Our purpose in making these remarks is merely to make clear our point of departure in evaluating the institutions studied herein. Apologies for concentrating on difficulties and exceptions are not necessary. In the first place, we have no desire to search out the weaknesses and failures of important and highly useful institutions simply in order to place them in an unfavorable light. Second, the pejorative connotation usually attached to "escape clauses," the kind of safeguard provision most in the public eye, is not justified in principle. Escape clauses and other safeguarding mechanisms are necessary elements of trade treaties and they can be fashioned so as to play a constructive role in the development of freer world trade.

The chapters other than those dealing with the four trading arrangements mentioned above are brief. An introductory chapter attempts to set out the problem of reconciliation as the author sees it, and three concluding chapters are devoted, successively, to a general outline of alternative safeguarding procedures, to reconciliation policy in Europe and America, and to implications for American policy. These chapters attempt to interpret and to draw certain inferences from the studies of the organizations. Some of the materials were drawn upon for an article which appeared in the March-April 1962 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Virtually all the work was carried out in 1960-61 while the author held a Ford Foundation faculty research fellowship. The study benefited greatly from discussions with many busy and responsible officials who gave generously of their time; over a hundred officers of the four organizations and of the governments which participate in them were interviewed in Geneva, Paris, Luxemburg, Brussels, London, and The Hague. Messrs. Wilfred Beckerman, John Fay, and Joseph Mintzes in Paris were helpful in providing research facilities, and Baron Snoy and Mr. Paul Hatry of Brussels, Professors Raymond Vernon and Seymour Harris of Cambridge, Mass., and Professor Arthur Bloomfield of Philadelphia were among the nongovernmental readers of portions of the manuscript. The author is grateful to them, to the anonymous readers in official positions, to the officials who granted interviews or provided information through correspondence, and to the Ford Foundation, but of course the author alone is responsible for the views and interpretations found in the study. The author takes pleasure also in acknowledging his indebtedness to the library of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, which has a splendid collection of materials on European integration and, what is equally important, an efficient and helpful staff.