U.s. Domestic Politics Of Trade And The International Trading System, Interactive Relationship Study

This paper researches in the interactive mechanism between domestic trade politics of U.S. and the multilateral trade system of WTO. In reality, this mechanism is composed of three simultaneous processes :( I)How does domestic interest groups influence USTR negotiation in WTO and U.S. trade policymaking;(II)How does U.S. influence and dominate WTO by faulty its decision-making system.(III)How WTO system influence American trade politics, congresses, administration and interest groups all included. The three processes are intersecting and overlapped by each other, and if any one of which changes will have impact on the other two in series.Firstly, this paper, explores the developments of interest groups' participation in WTO negotiations by USTR, especially from the establishment of The Industry Consultations Program (ICP) pursuant to Trade of 1974. From then on, USTR absorbed more and more private sectors' opinions and advices when preparing for international trade negotiations. And policy inputs and feedbacks from non- central governments, industries and other NGOs have become part of official negotiating texts by synergetic work of three inter-governmental trade committees(TPSC,TPRG and NEC).Moreover, special election system of U.S. congresses and legitimation of political contributions make it possible that the opinions of constituency and PACs can influence congressmen directly. Thus, interest groups can influence president and USTR by way of congress.Secondly, this paper casts light on the real world of WTO decision-making mechanism and the important role that U.S. plays in it. In fact, the official voting mechanism stipulated in WTO legal texts have not materialized because convention allows informal bilateral and plurilateral consultations to surrogate formal meetings. Furthermore, member driven system makes consensus most difficulty, but meanwhile super member can dominate negotiation processes materially. Therefore, the "two-tier" and "QUAD" structure will not alter in foreseeable period. In addition, the unilateralism of U.S. in world trade system makes America's civil law prior to international law.Thirdly, this paper assesses the impact on U.S. trade politics brought by WTO system. On one side, congress transferred trade policy-making power to administration to the effect that inter-governmental negotiations are more efficient coordinated by USTR, and this enhanced the institution of ICP. On the other hand, more and more interest groups' political resources are flowing to administration sector. But all government sectors, including congress, have secured more "rents" than before. So, there are much possibilities in that enlargement of WTO jurisdiction has triggered over-investment in political sector by interest groups.From the all of the above, we can find that more participation of interest groups in USTR' work, U.S. vindicates its national interests and economic security, and we should learn from it and work over our institution options in trade negotiations and policy-making.