S. Tariffs and Trade Wars

Trade policy is one of the most contentious and consequential issues of our era. Our goal in the seminar is to explain where we are, how we got here and where we are going. We use three tools to answer these questions: (1) the U.S. legal framework established by the Constitution and U.S. law setting the parameters for how the United States engages with foreign countries and international institutions; (2) the history of U.S. trade law, policy and politics; and (3) the ways in which international rules ― WTO, NAFTA, USMCA and other agreements ― have sought to regulate economic and commercial relationships between the United States and its trading partners. The seminar paper enables students to focus on a topic of prime interest to them.