The law of international trade finance has for a long time been, and is likely to remain, a specialist subject for the specialist. Despite the age of payment instruments such as bills of exchange and letters of credit, a number of legal problems arising from their use have not been satisfactorily resolved. At the national level, these problems are serious enough. When transposed onto the international scene, they are exacerbated by environmental factors. The elimination or at least a reduction of differences based on environmental factors will enhance the security of payment and financing transactions in international trade. In no other area of law has uniformity of applicable law been pursued with more success than in international trade. Much of international trade law is affected by Uniform Rules, Codes and Conventions. Although the legal status of these, i.e., whether they are normative trade usuages, contractual trade usages or factual trade usages, is unclear—nevertheless, they go a long way, both individually and collectively, to eliminate much of the differences arising under different national laws.

The Law of International Trade Finance is a collection of essays by writers from various countries on issues of law and practice arising from payment and financing transactions in international trade. The essays aim to describe the uniformity of legal concepts across many different countries. It is therefore, not surprising that the book gives a very general account of the payment and financing techniques in export and import trade. As a result, the book is likely to be of limited utility to the expert.

The layout is good. The book is divided into six parts. The first part, the General Part, explores payment and financing arrangements as well as risk management in international trade. The treatment is very lightweight, albeit useful to the uninitiated. In the first article, Norbert Horn reviews in outline the issues involved. Detlev Vagt’s essay on risk management in international trade financing and payment discusses the law in the United States. He identifies the main risks and the methods of minimizing them. Like most other contributions in this volume, this is a slightly pedestrian treatment. Andres Santamaria’s essay on Countertrade completes the first part. It provides a useful general survey of the issues and problems arising from countertrade. No attempt is made to suggest solutions, even if tentative, to these problems. For example, apart from antitrust considerations, the main legal issue in