BOOK REVIEW IS FREE TRADE OBSOLETE? MANAGING THE WORLD ECONOMY: CORPORATE ALLIANCES, THE CONSEQUENCES OF by Peter F. Cowhey and Jonathan D. Ar- onson. Published by the Counsel on Foreign Relations, Washing- ton, D.C., 1993. $18.95. Charles S. Kaufmant In the 1990s a protectionist's job is not an easy one. Consider the U.S. senators who set out to boost the fortunes of a domestic television maker by creating a high-density television ( HDTV ) consortium, only to find that European firms, Thomson and Philips, made more televisions in the United States than anybody else, and they did it in union shops. And what can protectors of the U.S. airframe industry do about incursions of that most notorious prod- uct of European subsidies and targeting, the Airbus, when it con- tains 30% U.S. content? Will it help for Japan to increase its imports of U.S.-made autos if those autos are Hondas? The nations that came together after World War II to create the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( GATT ) had fresh memories of the trade war that exacerbated the Great Depression. They sought to fashion a world where trade restraints gradually dis- appeared, allowing a global economy to flourish and raise living standards in all nations. In their book, Managing the World Econ- omy: The Consequences of Corporate Alliances, Peter F. Cowhey and Jonathan D. Aronson document the curious way things actu- ally turned out fifty years later. Global trade indeed is flourishing and expanding, but despite ever-present protectionist barriers. This expanding trade moves less through conventional exports of na- tional products, the authors tell us, and more through a byzantine network of international corporate alliances ( ICA s) that ex- change goods, investments, services, and complementary expertise in a way that transcends both cultural and protectionist barriers. They end by arguing for reforms in the GATT and, to a lesser ex- tent, antitrust laws to conform with new economic realities. t J.D. expected in May, 1994, UCLA School of Law.