Trade Protection Policy In The United States Political And Economic Analysis

The traditional trade theory based on new classical economics adheres to the doctrine that government should prefer free trade policy in order to reach Pareto optimum. However, trade facts told us that various trade protective policies are the mainstream of trade policies and governments rarely use free trade policy at all and the United States is no exception, too. Interested by the paradox of trade policy, the author of the dissertation tries to make a thorough analysis of American trade policy with a political and economic paradigm. The author argues that it is necessary to probe deeply into the endogenous process of trade policy from the angle of income distribution of international trade.The new paradigm used to analyze trade policy is called the political economy of international trade policy, which is derived from the theory of public choice. It argues that traditional methods of trade policy analysis have some drawbacks that cannot be ignored. For instance, traditional methods usually believes that the government will make the right trade policy with the aim of maximizing the welfare of the whole society and thus ignores the behaviors of the policy makers and other political factors during the process of trade policy making. On the contrary, the political economy of trade policy adheres that international trade policy is a public good and has its own political market. The government can be regarded as the supplier of trade policy and various interest groups can be considered as the demanders of trade policy. Due to the effect of income distribution of international trade policy, the supplier and demander will inevitably conflict with each other. In order to maximize their interests, the powers of the demander and supplier will reach equilibrium and the price of trade policies, such as tariff rate and other non-tariff trade barriers will be cleared in the political market, which determine the pattern and extent of trade protection.The author aims to make a study of the endogenous process of American trade policy with the instrument of political economy of trade policy. Firstly, the author constructs a framework of the political economy of trade policy with a brief review of relevant theories and ideas. Then, with the theory of the political economy of trade policy, the author gives a political analysis of American trade policies and hopes to draw anoutline of the endogenous track of American trade policy. The organizations and functions of the institutions concerned are analyzed with public choice theories and the author gives some conclusions after the studies of American congress, president, ITC and USTR. the interest groups as well as other political factors. With regard to the history process of American trade policy, the author makes some public choice analysis of some important trade acts passed by the American congress and draws some conclusions. As an illustration, the author makes a positive study of the protective trade policy of steel industry in America and describes the game between the government, the congress, the interest groups and the constituency.The conclusions of the dissertation can be given as follows: the development of American trade policy is an endogenous process with deep political and social background and it should be studied with a paradigm that can combine the relationship between economics and political science. The Congress prefers to protective trade policies because it is prone to the influence of interest groups. The president usually stands on the side of free trade policy and promotes the doctrine of trade liberalization. However, the president can also become a trade protectionist under the pressures of congress and interest groups. The International Trade Commission cannot be easily touched by pressure groups and usually make independent decisions. But on the whole, the ITC will usually inclines to the protective trade policies. The USTR always behaves like a protectionist and maintains the interests of American and domestic industries during interna...