ABSTRACT
The United Status Trade Act of 1974, like many legislative acts, is basically a compromise. The Act represents a trade-off among the groups from labor, industry, agriculture, and consumers who lobbied in Washington during the several years before its passage and until it was signed by the president in January 1975. The Trade Act contains provisions, many of them carried forward and modified from previous legislation, that restrict trade by granting protection to special groups that are damaged in one way or another by imports. These provisions include the escape clause, countervailing duties, antidumping actions, and unfair trade practices. A dilemma in some escape-clause cases lies in the diversity of firms within an industry. There may be a dozen or more large profitable firms capable of competing with imports and a hundred or more small marginal firms that have difficulty competing with either foreign producers or other domestic producers.
