The U.s. Free Trade Policy And The Post-war Multilateral Trading System,

This dissertation studied the relationship between the United States free trade policy and the multilateral trade regime from 1934 to 2004. The core questions of this paper are: Why and how did the United States establish and develop the free trade regime? And the study divided this period into 4 phases: 1934-1947, the United States founded the multilateral trade regime; 1947-1970, American administration renovated the Allies'economy through the free trade regime; 1971-1994, the United States enhanced the free trade regime to count its recession; 1995-2004, the United Sates forwarded the trade liberalization through multilateral and regional endeavor.The conclusion drawn from the study is that: The United States benefited from the free trade regime. It's prime motive and benefit from the multilateral trade regime is national security interests while economic interests are ranked as second; Therefore, the United States won't retreated from the trade liberalization even it experienced economic recession in 1970s and 1980s; In the future the United States will propel the free trade regime forward from multilateral and regional directions continuously despite the trade deficit problem and the challenge of domestic anti-globalization power.