Power, Politics and Tariffs

Previously published as Power, Politics and Tariffs, this new edition by Alan Bennett examines one of the defining developments in the modern international economy: the transformation of trade policy from an instrument of commerce into an instrument of strategic power.
Tariffs were once understood principally as measures for raising revenue or protecting domestic industries. Today they are increasingly used for broader purposes: to retaliate, bargain, compel, protect national security, reshape supply chains and influence the conduct of other governments. Alongside sanctions, export controls, investment restrictions and other forms of economic pressure, they have become part of a wider system of economic statecraft.
Alan Bennett explains how this transformation has placed growing strain on the rules-based international trading system established after the Second World War. He traces the development of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization, examines the legal disciplines governing tariffs and trade restrictions, and considers the exceptions governments invoke when economic policy becomes intertwined with national security and geopolitical competition.
At the centre of the book is a simple but powerful proposition: economic interdependence does not necessarily produce equality. Where one country depends more heavily than another on a particular market, technology, resource, financial system or supply chain, that imbalance can become a source of leverage. Bennett examines how such asymmetric dependence operates, why economic coercion sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails, and how retaliation, substitution, domestic politics and political resilience affect the outcome.
The book considers the continuing strategic rivalry between the United States and China, the vulnerabilities created by closely integrated North American trade, the practical limits of free trade agreements such as the USMCA, and the increasing use of sanctions and secondary economic pressure to influence the behaviour not only of adversaries but also of third countries.
These contemporary examples are used not simply to recount particular disputes, but to expose enduring mechanisms of economic power. The central question is therefore broader than any single tariff war or administration: what happens to international trade law when major states discover that immediate economic leverage may be more useful than compliance with rules designed to restrain them?
Written for lawyers, policymakers, business leaders, students and general readers, Power, Politics, and Tariffs Edition 2 combines legal analysis, economic history and geopolitical insight in accessible language. It explains both the architecture of the international trading system and the political forces now testing its limits.
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