By April 1996, Section 301 had been used 101 times. Appendix A lists
the cases and gives a brief summary of the actions and their outcome.
Given that Section 301 has been used in such a wide variety of ways
and with such widely differing levels of commitment by
administrations over the years, a mere recitation of the cases is not
particularly meaningful. Although the majority of the cases have been
settled to the satisfaction of the U.S. industry involved and the U.S.
trade negotiators, the success or failure of a case is a subjective
judgment. Results are often difficult to quantify since actual trade
flows depend on a number of factors, and Section 301 sometimes strips
away one set of barriers only to reveal others. There can be little doubt,
however, that Section 301 has been an important tool in opening
markets and expanding U.S. exports. Section 301's ultimate source of
leverage is the threat to close the U.S. market. Just the threat of
Section 301 action, including recourse to multilateral dispute
settlement, is sometimes sufficient to convince trading partners to open
their market.

To shed more light on the record of the statute, four representative
Section 301 cases have been chosen to illustrate how Section 301 can
work and when it is likely to fail. The case studies were also chosen to
illustrate the connection between Section 301 and the GATT dispute
settlement procedure in order to demonstrate the possible working

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