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Free Trade
Since the end of World War II, the United States has led the way in creating a number of international institutions that govern international trade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the largest and most powerful of these institutions. It seeks to promote free trade among member nations by reducing or eliminating domestic subsidies and protective tariffs. WTO members must agree to abide by the organization’s trade regulations, and almost all the world’s countries are represented in the membership.
The governing body of the WTO has the authority to punish any member state that violates these rules. Many American laborers believe that such organizations hurt American industry and lead to outsourcing, transferring jobs formerly available to American workers to workers in other countries. Proponents of free trade—including the American government—however, argue that the benefits of free trade far outweigh the costs because free trade lowers the price of consumer goods and allows Americans to purchase more with their money.
Humanitarianism
The United States has always been one of the major proponents of international human rights and has criticized many developing countries around the world for abusing those rights. President Jimmy Carter even made humanitarianism a major tenant of his foreign policy in the late 1970s. Since the end of World War II, the United States has also been the largest donor of international aid.
At the same time, the United States still lacks a codified humanitarianism foreign policy, responding to some global humanitarian crises (Somalia in 1992) but not others (Rwanda in 1996, Darfur in 2004). In fact, both conservative and liberal presidents and senators have refused to sign most international human rights treaties out of fear that Americans may be stripped of their rights as U.S. citizens when tried in international courts for crimes against humanity. This refusal has prompted much international criticism, especially in the wake of gross human rights violations, most notably at the American-controlled Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003 and at the American military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Americans and foreign policymakers alike are divided on whether the United States should make humanitarianism a more formal component of its foreign policy. Proponents argue that the United States should promote human rights as the so-called leader of the free world and as the country with the most resources to help others. Others, however, argue that promoting human rights and sending troops on humanitarian missions achieves nothing tangible for the United States and could lead to wasteful uses of resources and the needless loss of American lives.
Environmental Issues
Environmentalism has taken center stage in foreign policy as well. Many people around the world have realized that some environmental issues require transnational solutions, so they urge their political leaders to reach agreements over a variety of environmental matters. The most ambitious such agreement is the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 treaty signed to curb global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A number of states, however, including China and the United States, refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, claiming that it had been formulated on faulty science. It remains to be seen whether the treaty can be effective without American participation.
Kyoto in America
Despite the fact that the president and the Senate have refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, a number of state and local jurisdictions have adopted many of the treaty’s requirements. Similarly, a number of corporations have voluntarily complied with some of the protocol’s standards.
