| This paper is an attempt to use Most-Favored-Nation Treatment as a clue to understand the nature of the U.S. trade policy toward China in the past 150 years.; While Congress debates every year whether to extend the MFN status to China, it was the United States which in 1844 eagerly sought the same privilege from China. The much heralded Open Door policy was a diplomatic arm of the U.S. trade policy, designed to insure the American citizens in China that none of their foreign commercial competitors had unfair commercial advantages.; Historically and today, the United States has entertained a great optimism regarding the potentiality of the China market as the place to export America's industrial products. The analysis of trade data, however, has conclusively proved that such an optimism is unwarranted. The China market was, and is still today, more important as an import, rather than an export, market.; In the past and present, the United States has recorded persistent, and ever-increasing, trade deficit, a core of the current Congressional debate. Nevertheless, while tariff occupies the heart of the MFN status, its actual impact upon the trade volume, historically, has been negligible. What impacted on the rise and fall of the Sino-American trade volume has been the domestic economic conditions of the two countries and factors external to them, e.g., wars, invasions, and Great Depression.; Moreover, the China trade has occupied a rather insignificant place in the worldwide trade of the United States. In the past it represented a mere 2% of the U.S. overall trade. Even after substantial increase in the trade volume in the recent years, the share of the China trade still stands at approximately 6% of the U.S. overall trade. |
