This study of American trade policy addresses two puzzles associated with the use of aggressive bargaining tactics to open foreign markets. First, as the country with greater power and resources, why has the United States achieved more success in extracting concessions from some of its trading partners than others? Second, why is it that trade disputes between democratic and authoritarian states do not more frequently spark retaliatory actions than those between democratic pairs?
Ka Zeng finds answers to both of these questions in the domestic repercussions of the structure of trade between the United States and its trading partners, whether the United States has a competitive trade relationship with its trading partner, or whether trade is complementary.
This book offers practical policy prescriptions that promise to be of interest to trade policymakers and students of international trade policy.
Ka Zeng is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

". . . Zeng has focused on a body of practical wisdom that has considerable explanatory power in contemporary trade politics."
—Political Science Quarterly

"For the trade negotiator satisfying domestic interests is often more arduous a task than securing concessions from a trading partner. Professor Zeng's book captures these details and dynamics of the multilevel game of U.S. trade negotiations in the 1980s and 1990s and advances an intriguing hypothesis to explain unexpected successes and failures. Trade warriors old and new will find useful lessons in her exhaustive review of key U.S. bilateral trade negotiations of the past two decades."
—Joseph A. Massey, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and former Assistant U. S. Trade Representative for Japan and China.