How is U.S. trade policy towards China determined?

Xiaosong Wang, Kunwang Li, Shenxiang Xie and Jack Hou

China Economic Review, 2013, vol. 27, issue C, 25-36

Abstract: Utilizing a political economy approach towards trade policy formulation, we examine the case of how the U.S. House voted on the PNTR status for China. Our focus is to analyze the factors affecting the legislators' voting behavior and to deduce the rationale behind these factors. We find that the U.S. trade policies towards China represent a balanced equilibrium based on interactions between the government and special interest groups. The individual characteristics of the legislators were not important in the process. Predictions of neo-classical trade models regarding the attitudes of various groups on trade liberalization could not be fully validated in the voting outcome of the PNTR bill.

Keywords: U.S. trade policy towards China; The PNTR bill; Interest group; Political contributions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B41 D72 F13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X13000503
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:27:y:2013:i:c:p:25-36

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2013.07.008

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().