ABSTRACT
Bill Clinton won the presidency of a recession-torn United States largely because he was able to convince millions of voters that he would address the economic problems to which George Bush seemed oblivious. In its first year, the Clinton administration's policies on the world economy equated the "national interest" primarily with large corporate interests, while treating the majority—environmentalists, women's groups, organized labor, family-farm groups, and related citizens groups—as "special interests," instead of the other way around. The overall failure by the Clinton administration to understand the global interconnections as it focused its energies on a domestic economic plan led it into a series of misplaced policies vis-a-vis the world economy. In 1986, the Reagan administration launched comprehensive negotiations to liberalize global trade rules concerning agriculture, services, and investment under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
