The Capture of the Antidumping Law

PROTECTIONIsM. By Jagdish N. Bhagwati.t Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1988. Pp. xiii, 147. $16.95 (Hardcover). "International economists," Jagdish Bhagwati writes, "have long been frustrated by the dissonance between the elegance of their irrefutable demonstration of the advantages of free trade and the inelegance with which practical politics embraces protection." International trade lawyers, for their part, frequently have been frustrated by the apparent ivory tower impracticality of many of those same international economists.

To those in the arena opposing protection, the arguments of some economists can appear so dismissive of the very real human concerns of those who seek protection as to be irrelevant at best and counterproductive at worst.