Three Path Analysis Of U.S. Foreign Economic Policy

After the World War Ⅰ and Ⅱ, American economic strength increased substantially, and take up more important position in the world economic system. American foreign economic behaviors not only commerce and technologies but also its financial policies have a profound impact on other countries inside the system and its domestic politics and economy, so American external economic policies has become a great concern in the research of international political economy(IPE) and comparative political economy in the world. In the article, through the use of levels of analysis and a host of political economy scholars’ analysis, we can see that there have been three levels in the studying of American foreign trade policy, such as society-centered, system-centered and state-centered; each model also contains some specific interpretation models. All the three research trails can reveal different kinds of variables in the changing of American foreign trade policy. Particularly, system-centered explain the causes of American foreign trade policy from the structural properties of international political and economic system, in the model, the system factors, for example, the international power distribution, the international system environment, interdependence and so on, play an decisive role on the formulation process of American foreign trade policy. Society-centered focus on the social factors’ effect, in the model, the formulation of American foreign trade policy is determined by civil individual interest groups and social attitudes. State-centered focus on the state’s independent active function. As the connection point of international society and civil society, the sate actors and state system have the limited and molding effect to American foreign trade policy.The three kinds of research trails give us different research angle of view for American foreign trade policy, but they are not enough. They all have widely explained strength, at the same time, exist some limitations for many factors, for example, the changes of internal and external circumstances, the complex international policy, the maturity of the model itself. In a word, through the studying of three foreign trade policies, we can better understand the causes about how kinds of American foreign trade policy produce.