United States International Trade Commission

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Trilateral Commission, an internationalist policy‐planning and advocacy organization comprising several hundred leaders from the private sector, government, academia, and the media. Promoting cooperation among the ruling elements of western Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, the commission was founded in 1973 in New York City by Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller, future National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and other prominent figures.

The commission first focused on providing solutions to destabilizing political and economic problems. These included instabilities in the international monetary system, protectionism and trade issues, barriers to investment, the commercial challenges posed by Japanese efforts, poverty in the developing world, and nuclear arms control. For the long‐term, the commission set an ambitious agenda including such diverse topics as demographic growth, exploitation of the sea, educational reform, rules for multinational enterprises, and U.S. democracy.

Based in New York City, Paris, and Tokyo, the commission is run by an extensive bureaucracy. The leadership represents the apex of global power, including merchants; future and former political leaders; corporate and agribusiness executives; investors and bankers; and, in some European cases, trade unions and leftist politicians.

American membership traditionally has been drawn from an inner core of elites in frequent contact with U.S. officials. The commission thus became a target of criticism in some U.S. circles for underrepresenting Congress, women, labor unions, and the populist left and right. Ronald Reagan criticized George Bush's links to the commission in the 1980 Republican presidential primary campaign. Others accused the group of promoting corporate hegemony, one‐world government, or elitism. Nevertheless, the commission remained influential. President Jimmy Carter drew on fellow members to fill administration posts and even Reagan appointed Trilateralists as secretaries of state, treasury, and defense, and as White House advisers.
See also Capitalism; Cold War; Foreign Relations; Global Economy, America and the; Internationalism; Isolationism; Nuclear Arms Control Treaties; Post–Cold War Era.

Bibliography

Holly Sklar, ed., Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, 1980.
Stephen Gill , American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission, 1990.

Thomas W. Zeiler

United States International Trade Commission independent agency of the U.S. government established in 1916 as the Tariff Commission; renamed International Trade Commission in 1975. It is charged with serving the president and Congress as an advisory, fact-finding agency on tariff, commercial-policy, and foreign-trade problems. Earlier tariff agencies had a definite policy of protection ; the 1916 commission was considered the first truly unbiased agency. Recent legislation, such as the Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, empowers the commission not only to investigate the effects of imports on competing domestic industry, but to direct imports to be excluded if it finds producers engaging in unfair trade or in violation of patent or copyright law. The president may terminate commission orders for policy reasons. On request, the commission's findings are made available to the president or the congressional committees concerned with trade. The commission advises on the possible effects of pending trade agreements or tariff legislation as well. The U.S. Trade Commission consists of six members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for nine-year terms, not more than three to be of the same political party and the chairman and vice chairman to be of different parties.