In the post-Cold War world, trade is the new arena for competition - between nations, between groups, between ethical and theoretical ideas.

Political economist Bruce Moon puts contemporary trade events - NAFTA, United States-Japan controversies, the Uruguay Round of GATT, China's most-favored-nation status, the founding of the World Trade Organization - into historical and theoretical perspective with the British Corn Laws, the Great Depression, the Bretton Woods system, and the origins of the European Union. Economic theory, terms, and concepts are clearly explained and contextualized with those from international relations.

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Throughout the book, three central dilemmas are examined: the unequal distribution of income and wealth created by international trade, the trade-off among competing values that trade requires, and the difficult interrelationship between economic and foreign policy goals within and among trading nations.

Though internationally framed, each dilemma has ramifications at a variety of levels all the way down to the individual's role in the global economy - as a consumer, as a citizen, and ultimately as a moral agent.