A Study On The Developments Of US Trade Policy Towards China And US-China Trade In The Post-cold War Era

China and the United States are major world powers and important trading partners.There is a huge trade demand between the two countries,but serious trade conflicts broke out during Trump administration.There have been many studies on the trade war at home and abroad,but the existing studies focus on analyzing the U.S.policy toward China or the trade policy during a certain president’s administration without analyzing the long-term history to have a look at the panorama.This article attempts to sort out the evolution of the America’s policy and trade policy toward China during the post-Cold war era from Clinton to Trump administration,in order to find the long-term logic of U.S.policy behind the trade war.The main body of the paper is divided into four parts: firstly,this paper analyzes the US policy and trade policy toward China during the Bill Clinton administration,and finds out that after several years of adjustment,America intended to establish a constructive strategic partnership with China and passed a bill to try to remove the institutional barriers to Sino-US trade;followed by the George W·Bush administration,generally treating China as a regional partner and maintaining a market-oriented pragmatic trade policy;thirdly,the Barak Obama administration,maintaining a friendly policy toward China in order to restore the economy in the early stage,but since 2011,President Obama had promoted the "pivot to the Asia" strategy in an attempt to contain China;finally,during Donald Trump administration,the United States’ China policy has taken a sharp turn,treating China as an "adversary",and America started a trade war.This paper analyzes the U.S.trade with China in the past 30 years,and finds that Sino-U.S.trade had experienced rapid growth,slowing growth,and finally recession.The Sino-America trade was marked by high growth during the Clinton and Bush administration,stability during Obama administration and decline during Trump administration.The US’s China policy and trade policy have obviously promoted or hindered Sino-US trade.All in all,from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration,the liberal factors in the American China trade policy had dominated,but the protectionist factors had been also accumulating,causing a qualitative change during the Trump administration and a sharp turn of the direction of the U.S.trade policy toward China.With the rise of China,United States has been becoming more and more inclined to contain China,which is also an important cause for the change of the US policy and trade policy toward China.