Congressional Voting on International Economic Bills in the 1990s

Abstract

Because the United States is the world’s traditional leader in promoting globalization, US international economic policies have important implications for other countries as well as for US citizens. Consequently, an understanding of the political, economic and social forces shaping congressional voting behaviour on trade and foreign assistance bills is important for both public- and private-sector leaders in the United States and other countries. The change in the voting behaviour of the US Congress (specifically, the House of Representatives) between the early and late 1990s from supporting trade-liberalizing measures such as NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round, to rejecting efforts to renew fast-track authority for the president and approving import quotas for the steel industry, makes an analysis of congressional voting patterns especially relevant as we approach the next century.