ABSTRACT
The key question confronting theories of foreign economic policy is whether state preferences matter and, if so, how to examine them in a theoretically useful way. Systemic realist and game-theoretic models of US trade policy are, at best, theoretically permissive due to their neglect of the domestic process of preference formation. Society-centred models focus too narrowly on domestic interest group demands, downplaying the role of the state in the determination of preferences.
