Government-business strategies in EU-US economic relations: The lessons of the foreign sales corporations issue

Abstract:

The increasingly complex character of the US-EU economic relationship is well understood. Within this relationship, trade politics is an important setting for the interaction of firms, states and civil society. Focusing on a highly significant transatlantic trade dispute relating to a US tax policy (called foreign sales corporations), the article explores the business-government interactions generated. We conclude that such cases illustrate how the integrated character of the transatlantic economy limits the tactical options for all policy players and produces patterns of interaction between public and private actors in which both can come to assume significant roles.