| Summary/Abstract |
As summer slowly unfolded in Washington in 2015, the global trade bill was tenuously moving forward after surviving more than one near-death experience. It is a syndrome as well as a legislative event: No global trade liberalization agreement has advanced beyond the aspirational stage since the Uruguay Round was completed more than 20 years ago, and the United States has managed to finish only one substantial regional agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), since 1994. There is a simple explanation for this indecisiveness and inaction: Trade liberalization is hard to sell to a skeptical public bombarded with populist fear of competition from a succession of low-wage countries, and political leaders have consistently failed to muster the political will to push agreements to completion.
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