Congressional Roll Call Voting on China Trade Policy

• Author: Tao Xie
• Published date: 01 November 2006
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X06289162
• Date: 01 November 2006
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

Volume 34 Number 6

November 2006 732-758

© 2006 Sage Publications

10.1177/1532673X06289162

http://apr.sagepub.com

hosted at

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732

Author’s Note: This research is partly funded by a Graduate Research Grant from the

Graduate School at Northwestern University. I am particularly grateful to the three anonymous

reviewers and the editor for their invaluable comments. I thank Ben Page,my advisor, for his

unfailing support and penetrating questions. I am deeply indebted to Sean Gailmard, who

kindly helped me tackle many of the methodological issues. I also thank Jeff Jenkins and

Victor Shih for their useful comments and suggestions. My special thanks go to Tim Nokken

and Scott Adler, who were generous enough to provide some of their data.

Congressional

Roll Call Voting

on China Trade Policy

Tao Xie

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

This article analyzes roll call voting on China’s most favored nation (MFN)

and permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status to ascertain intercham-

ber difference and party polarization in China trade policy. In the House,

party has the largest impact, with Republicans much more supportive of

MFN than Democrats. Ideology has the second largest impact, with conser-

vatives and liberals voting against moderates. In the Senate, party is the sole

significant determinant of MFN voting. In House voting on PNTR, ideology

has the biggest and party the second biggest impact. The lopsided nature of

the Senate PNTR vote indicates that ideology, party, and constituency inter-

ests had little or no impact. In both MFN and PNTR voting in the House,

constituency economic interests have only marginal effects, and only con-

stituency interests adversely affected by trade with China have significant

impact on the PNTR vote. The author concludes by situating the findings in

the broad debate about interchamber difference and increasing polarization in

Congress.

Keywords: U.S. Congress; roll call voting; China; trade policy; most

favored nation status; constituency interest

U.S.-China trade is one of the most controversial topics in the halls of

Congress. The controversy began in the aftermath of the Tiananmen

uprising when members of both parties introduced bills revoking or attach-

ing conditions to China's most favored nation (MFN) trade status (now

called normal trade relations, or NTR).1What ensued was a 10-year battle

Xie / Congressional Voting on China Trade 733

between the White House and Congress over China’s MFN in particular

and China policy in general that, as President Clinton lamented, “divided

our foreign policy and weakened our approach over China” (Public

Papers of the Presidents, 1993, p. 770). As the passions surrounding

Tiananmen gradually cooled, the astronomical U.S. trade deficit with

China replaced human rights as the focus of congressional debate. The

MFN battle finally came to an end in 2000, when Congress voted to grant

China permanent NTR (PNTR). This vote cleared the way for the latter’s

bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).2

Now that the dust has settled over MFN and PNTR, it is time to ask

some important questions. Why did some members vote for unconditional

MFN renewal and others against it? Did members vote on MFN the same

way as they did on PNTR? Is there any interchamber difference in roll call

voting on the two issues? What is the role of party in the two types of votes?

Finally, how do my findings fit into theories of American politics? This

study attempts to answer these questions with quantitative analysis of the

MFN and PNTR votes.3Statistical findings provide strong evidence of

interchamber difference and party polarization on the two votes. Party and

ideology are the most important determinants of MFN and PNTR voting in

the House, with constituency interests having only marginal effects. In the

Senate, party is the sole significant determinant of MFN voting; party, ide-

ology, and constituency interests had little or no impact on the Senate

PNTR vote given its lopsided margin.

This article has three sections. First, I briefly recount the legislative battle

over MFN and PNTR, and then formulate hypotheses to be tested. Next, I pre-

sent the data and discuss the methodologies for hypothesis testing. Then sta-

tistical findings are presented and discussed. Finally, I conclude the article

with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the study of inter-

chamber differences and increasing partisan polarization in the U.S. House.

The MFN Battle

The otherwise uncontroversial MFN renewal became “fodder for political

debate” (Nokken, 2003, p. 156) following what happened on Tiananmen

Square in the summer of 1989. Already angered by the Chinese govern-

ment’s actions at Tiananmen, Congress grew increasingly frustrated over

China policy when it learned of the Bush administration’s secret missions

to reestablish a relationship with Beijing immediately after Tiananmen

(Harding, 1992; Mann, 1999; Suettinger, 2003; Yang, 2000). In an attempt