This interesting book systematically examines the original European Community, the Single European Act, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its 1979 standards code, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Area, and the more recent North American Free Trade Agreement...Vogel finds that, while counterexamples do exist, trade liberalization on balance has strongly reinforced environment-improving regulations.

Trading Up tackles the increasingly prominent and controversial relationship between trade and regulatory/environmental policies...[It] is well written, with a wealth of sometimes off-beat detail, and will repay reading.

This book is a pioneering contribution to the growing literature on the relationship between trade policy and protective regulation...[It] is a required reading not only for students and practitioners of international trade but all those involved in the making of environmental and regulatory standards.

Trading Up is not the only book on trade and environment...But it is the one of the most probable interest to most political scientists. It opens the way to many research inquiries on the outcomes of the various linkages and of their possible global extension...The outcomes of these linkages and their successes or failures may provide many dissertations, articles, and books in coming decades.

When I teach international economics, students invariably ask me how to distinguish a protectionist barrier to trade from a legitimate health rule. This book provides a rich collection of cases to show how international trade agreements and their dispute settlement procedures have answered this question. The book centers around the question of how increased economic integration affects consumer safety...The results of the theoretical models are supplemented through rigorous empirical studies. The endnotes of each chapter provide crucial information to readers. The study is comprehensive and well-documented with an exhaustive list of references. The author provides a European perspective on the [Federal Reserve's] exchange rate policies in comparison to those of the Bundesbank's...This book is well-written, interesting and informative, and particularly good at describing how trade and regulatory disputes have been resolved. Teachers of international, environmental, or consumer economics should note that this book is written in an easily-accessible style, and is suitable for students.

The book's coverage is broad. It treats efforts to promote free trade within Europe and throughout the world. It examines consumer issues, environmental issues, and the many issues that fall in between. It encompasses legal, economic, and political disputes. Few authors could have mastered all these topics, but fortunately Vogel is up to the task...The basic message of Trading Up cannot be ignored by students of the consumer movement...Vogel convinces us that, for the foreseeable future, it will be impossible to study the consumer or environmental movements without simultaneously considering trade policy.