From the technical analyses of wide ranges of scholars to the public discourse backlashes against globalization, there is a huge volume of work historicizing, quantifying, and problematizing the complex role of multinational corporations (MNCs) in international trade. The body of literature is so large that most readers rely on disciplinary boundaries to narrow the catalog, causing them to miss out on important synergies across fields. By bringing the work of historians, lawyers, and political scientists working on MNCs and international trade into conversation, we offer an expanded perspective. Our collective contribution highlights the political dimensions of MNCs within the frameworks of global economic governance, in which corporations seek to influence trade policies amid rising protectionism and coordinate their activities within industry associations while regulators struggle to hold MNC parent companies accountable to international human rights violations across their value chains. Especially in this moment of re-evaluation — and possible de-globalization following the shock of COVID-19 — our multidisciplinary analysis explains how MNCs exerted political power over trade regimes in the past, by what means they seek to shape regulatory frameworks in the present, and what the possible futures might be for big business operations in a more or less global economy.

Many products—from consumer electronics to children's toys—bear the CE mark, the symbol of conformity to the “essential requirements” of European standards. This article traces the development of CE marking from its origins in the European Community's (EC) efforts to relaunch the Single European Market in the mid-1980s to its full implementation in the mid-1990s across the European Economic Area (EEA). It focuses in particular on the reforms made to the “New Approach to Technical Harmonization” and the “Global Approach to Testing and Certification” and examines the ways business groups responded to the creation of common systems for assessing conformité européenne. This history offers an expansive view of regional market integration and a new perspective on the dynamic between companies and regulators in the European business environment.

L’histoire économique des relations transatlantiques d’après-guerre s’est articulée autour de deux discours prédominants : l’aide américaine à la reconstruction de l’Europe par le plan Marshall et « le défi » des investissements des entreprises américaines en Europe. Mais peu de recherches ont lié ces deux éléments. De plus, les études existantes ont négligé l’expansion des entreprises européennes outre-Atlantique. Cet article tâchera de remédier à ces deux lacunes de la recherche en examinant les relations transatlantiques sous l’angle des entreprises. En particulier, le cas de l’épicier belge Delhaize, sa participation aux programmes d’assistance technique des États-Unis dans les années 1950, les défis qu’il a dû relever dans les années 1960, et son expansion sur les marchés des États-Unis dans les années 1970 offrira une nouvelle dimension à l’histoire des relations transatlantiques au cours du xx e  siècle et l’histoire de la mondialisation.

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