U.S. Trade Policy Towards China

The United States has the most powerful economic strength in the world and is the most important trade partner of China, so its trade policy toward China is closely linked to China-U.S. economic and trade relationships, and affects Chinese economic development significantly. Both countries have obtained lots of benefits from bilateral trade, but at the same time trade frictions between two countries have emerged in endlessly. U.S. government imposed rigourous trade barriers towards Chinese commodities frequently, and all circles of the U.S. forced for China's concession on trade issues, which leaded a dark perspective for two countries'economic relationship. U.S. trade policy toward China is the core of bilateral trade issues, so it deserves to be studied deeply and earnestly.The United States has many characteristics itself, and the bilateral relationship between China and the U.S. is very intricate, therefore we cannot explain the forming and deciding mechanism of U.S. trade policy towards China well with traditional trade theories. What is necessary is the analysis from new visual angle.This text analyzes U.S. trade policy towards China from political economic angle, focusing on anatomizing the existing formula, forming mechanism and reasons of the evolvement of the policy. An expectation of future track of Sino-U.S. trade will be made in the text.The whole text consists of seven parts. Chapter 1 states the background of the topic, research route and method, as well as the innovation points of the text. Chapter 2 introduces the theoretical framework of the political economy of trade, and a literature review is also contained in this chapter. In Chapter 3, we firstly state the fluctuation and stage-like characters during the development process of China-U.S. economic and trade relationships. Then we anatomize deep-level political economic factors behind the phenomenon, a political economy approach being used. In Chapter 4, we bring the issue of electoral support and delegation into Grossman and Helpman's (1994) Protection for Sale model to investigate the mechanism and process of trade policy formed through interactions between incumbency, administration and various types of voters. In Chapter 5, we run an empirical test on the affair that U.S. congress voted to decide whether to grant China the PNTR status in 2000. Our focus is to reveal which factors affecting congressional members'voting behavior and to point out the magnitude of the factors. Chapter 6, through the approach of political economy of trade policy, explores which factors affect U.S. administered agencies'decision-making process of antidumping cases toward China and the relative importance of each factor. Chapter 7 consists of the conclusion of the text, prospect and research directionThe conclusions are as follows. After establishing diplomatic relations with China, the United States firstly adopted very friendly trade policy toward China. Then the policy kept friendly, but this nature has passivity, and some conflicts in trade area have sharpened. At present, U.S. trade policy toward China has lost evident characteristic and become more complicated. For the future, all circles in China should pry about U.S. trade policy toward China more thoroughly and post its orderliness, in order to instruct the practice of Sino-U.S. trade. When administration is self-interest, the delegated protection level is higher than the level determined by incumbency. Political organized industries tend to obtain protection more easily and get higher tariff than unorganized ones. The political power of petitioners is the most important factor affecting the ruling outcomes. The determinations of "whether the domestic industry is being injured" depend on whether the case is solely toward China. And the ruling outcomes of antidumping duty rate depend on Sino-U.S. bilateral trade status and which section the involved commodities are affiliated with. Other economic and political factors have not brought significant impacts on ruling outcomes. Through the whole text, we conclude that representative system is a two-side sword. U.S. trade policy toward China is the interaction among government, public and interest groups.