Introduction -- Limitations of Voluntary Restraints -- Follies of Voluntary Restraints: Politics and Economics -- CD Players: Laster Light at the End of the Tunnel -- Meeting the Challenge: Blind Alley of New Protection -- Trade Rules and Struggle for Margin -- Market Structure and Dumping -- Myth of Japanese Efficiency: Dumping of Compact Disc Players -- Aftermath of VCRs: the Politicised End to a Coninuing Story -- Blurred Picture: Trade Policy and Television's Future in the Dark -- Orientation on Origin Rules: a Digression on Discrimination -- Inter and Intra European Company Politics -- Trade Policy and Pressure Politics: Fax Machines -- Dark Practices in Lighting -- Methodology of Dumping -- Elements in the Determination of the Level of Measures -- After All.

Trade policy has played a vital role in the decline of European electronics business. The events that resulted in the disappearance of the European television industry, of a European and Japanese video recorder format and of other European consumer electronics are directly related to market structures in exporting countries and business practices. In this book, factual business data shows and economic models explain how restrictive trade practices result in elimination of efficient competitors in export markets. It deals with the memorable case how a videocassette recorder format was established by dumping and how politics enabled it. An innovative tariff increase for CD players was invalidated by heavy dumping, causing closure of production in Europe. European CTV industry succumbed under permanent dumping and a series of biases - as the interest of a state-owned company - and serious errors making trade instruments void and rules irreconcilable with international agreements. Practical and theoretical examples and explanations, some in detail, of trade rules are provided. The book sketches events - carelessness, prejudice or special interests, arbitrary and false application of trade instruments and fraud - resulting in disappearance of various European electronics business segments.