Congressional Trade Politics, 1985-1995

The foreign trade literature typically sees Congress abdicating its policymaking role to the executive. In addition to a presidential model of policymaking, three other models are identified (the joint participation, congressional, and bureaucratic models) and Congress's significant post-cold war foreign trade policymaking across these models is examined. Policy outputs are also categorized, as instances of congressional victories, presidential victories, partial victories for each side, and instances of policy agreement. The findings indicate that Congress plays an active policymaking role in 78 percent of the cases and gets part or all of its policy desires enacted in 84 percent of the cases. Thus the congressional role in post-cold war foreign trade policy-making seems substantially more significant than much of the literature suggests. Further, Congress in this period seems particularly responsive to bipartisan and interest group pressures, but the presence of presidential lobbying shows some variance by policymaking model. Finally, Congress seems generally to support liberal trade policies so long as local constituency pressures do not contradict them. At that point, Congress becomes more protectionist, thus reminding us that "all politics are local."