the Chen Dynasty

Authors: American Institute of China Academy of Social Sciences.

From Reagan economics to Clinton economics, it is a great change in American presidential economics. In this year's president's economic report, Clinton said: "America has prospered because of change ... but our country has let itself drift in too many ways for too long." "In the past 12 years, the economic theory of gradual infiltration of interests has caused false prosperity on the mountain of federal debt. As a result of national laissez-faire, so many American families, even those whose parents work, no longer dream of improving their children's lives. " This is Clinton's criticism of Reagan's economics and the main basis for his determination to change "laissez-faire" into "activism". In a blink of an eye, two years passed. What progress and achievements have Clinton made in domestic and international economic policies? This is a question that people are quite interested in. Do a shallow analysis in the next interview.

Fiscal policy with initial results

In order to solve the big deficit problem that plagues the American economy, Clinton gave priority to reducing the federal deficit. To this end, he is determined to cut the deficit of $493 billion on the basis of the deficit of $500 billion reached by Bush and Congress in 1990. Among them, the total expenditure will be reduced by $247 billion and the tax revenue will be increased by $246 billion in the next five years. The tax increase was originally a boat sailing against the current, but Clinton proposed a reasonable burden policy, putting 90% tax increase on the shoulders of taxpayers with the highest income of 6.5%. The increase of income tax rate is limited to 1.2% high-income earners. In this way, he won the support of most taxpayers and won a strategic victory. Despite this, the passage of this budget bill is still difficult, especially in the Senate. Without Gore's last vote, it was almost a deadlock. In order to show the determination and sincerity to reduce the deficit, the budget bill of 1994- 1998 freezes the expenditure of fiscal year 65438 at the level of $548 billion (excluding current inflation), which is $2.5 billion lower than the nominal expenditure of 1993. This nominal expenditure is estimated based on the annual inflation rate of 2.8%. If the inflation rate is lower than expected, the expenditure will be further reduced. This budget tightening includes the White House reducing the number of federal employees by 654.38 million+and delaying the adjustment of the wage and living index of federal employees. In terms of rights, medical care will be reduced by 1998 and18 billion US dollars. Through such efforts, it is predicted that by 1998, the fiscal expenditure will be reduced from1825.5 billion dollars before the reduction to1738.2 billion dollars, and the fiscal revenue will rise from1492.2 billion dollars to1550.8 billion dollars. The fiscal deficit will be reduced from $333.2 billion to187.4 billion, by145.8 billion, and the proportion of GDP will be reduced from 4% to about 2.2%. The Clinton administration said that the fiscal policy adopted by 1993 was a credible deficit reduction policy, and believed that the reaction of Wall Street made them change their expectations of inflation and the long-term interest rate fell. Take 10-year national debt as an example. Before Clinton took office, the annual interest rate of 1992 was 7.0 1%, which was higher than that of treasury bill rate in three months. By 1993, the former dropped to 5.87%, and compared with the latter, the spread dropped to 92%. From 65438 to 0994, in order to carry out macro-control, the Federal Reserve kept raising short-term interest rates, and long-term interest rates were naturally affected. However, the rising speed of long-term interest rate is much slower than that of short-term interest rate. As of July, 1994 and 10, the long-term national debt is only 66% higher than the three-month national debt. The decline in long-term interest rates is conducive to corporate investment and consumers' purchase of real estate and durable consumer goods. The Clinton administration believes that cutting military spending and increasing taxes in its fiscal policy have negative effects on economic growth, but the decline in long-term interest rates offsets the economic stimulus. This is an important reason why the American economy can perform well in 1993- 1994.

Future-oriented investment policy

The important difference between Clinton administration and Reagan and Bush administrations in economic policy lies not in the fiscal policy of deficit reduction, but in the future investment policy. The Clinton administration, which pursues activism, declared to people: "It is the symbol of this government's economic policy to shift the focus of federal expenditure from consumption to investment. We are not only committed to controlling government spending, but also to using government spending for more effective purposes. "

Clinton first emphasized the investment in human resources. Its purpose is to improve the quality of American labor force to cope with the increasingly fierce international economic competition. In the federal budget of 1994, a four-year "lifelong learning plan" costing $37.8 billion was proposed. These include an enlightenment project for children with mental retardation; The "2000 Target Plan" to improve the performance of American teachers and students; The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor cooperate to carry out the "transition from school to work" plan for vocational training of senior high school students; A national service plan to help students enter universities and give them the opportunity to serve the society, so as to acquire vocational skills; A loan reform plan to reduce loan interest and help more young Americans go to college, and a retraining plan for unemployed workers.

Among these plans, the national service plan is innovative. First of all, the state provides participants with wages below the market price and educational subsidies as high as $4,725 per year to help them receive valuable vocational training and university or college education. The reason why the government spends money on this matter is that employers are unwilling to pay for their study. They are worried that the money will be wasted once the employees resign. Second, the plan is implemented by state and local governments according to local conditions, which solves the difficulty that local governments need social services but have no funds. Third, the national service plan provides all Americans with double opportunities, not only to get wages, but also to receive various vocational training, which was impossible in the past. This plan will involve 20,000 people in 1994, and 654.38+10,000 people every year.

The second aspect of the investment plan is infrastructure. The Clinton administration has made a four-year plan to invest 48 billion dollars to rebuild the United States. Clinton believes that the United States has long relied heavily on public infrastructure. According to the estimation of the Ministry of Communications, almost 20% of expressways are in an extremely bad or reluctant state, 20% of bridges have structural defects, many airports are overcrowded, and sewage treatment facilities are overwhelmed. Therefore, investment must be made to change the status quo. The Clinton administration believes that well-planned public infrastructure investment will bring considerable benefits to the national economy. The plan to rebuild the United States also includes a four-year investment of $8 billion in improving water quality, protecting the environment, protecting natural resources, forest research, housing and community development and rural development. The third aspect of the investment plan is technology. In the plan to rebuild America, technology investment accounts for a large proportion. The Clinton administration believes that tangible capital is not the decisive factor to improve productivity, or even the most important factor. In the long run, the improvement of productivity and living standards mainly depends on technological progress. Judging from the progress history of industrial countries, it is important to work smarter rather than harder. But the change and progress of technology depend on the new discoveries made by scientists and engineers in laboratories and factory workshops. To this end, their investment in scientific research is huge. In the United States, a large number of scientific research and development rely on private enterprises, but due to the spillover effect of information, support and basic research have long been regarded as the legal functions of the government. This means that the skills gained by one company through scientific research will soon spread to other companies, making other companies cheap and innovators get limited returns. It is estimated that the return on capital of scientific research and development is as high as 50%- 100%, but in fact, innovative enterprises get less than half. Therefore, the Clinton administration asked Congress to extend the tax relief for research and experiments, and at the same time increase investment in cooperative research with industry. Add dozens of new manufacturing technology promotion stations, speed up the invention and promotion of new technologies, and play the role of market mechanism after the technology is mature.

How to realize the transformation of national defense research and development is an important policy consideration of the Clinton administration. With the massive reduction of national defense expenditure, should the government reduce the expenditure on scientific research in the field of national defense, or turn this expenditure to civilian technology? Clinton thinks the latter is a wise choice. Therefore, the government decided to turn the scientific research strength and national laboratory of the Ministry of National Defense into cooperation with industry for scientific research and development.

The American information superhighway plan, which has attracted worldwide attention, is the aura of the Clinton administration's science and technology policy. The plan is mainly sponsored by the government, but not funded by it. The Information Infrastructure Task Force, led by Ron Brown, Minister of Commerce, Al Gore, Vice President, Tai Sen, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and a group of economic, technical and legal experts and representatives of the telecommunications industry, is fully working. The scheme is that the federal government is responsible for the overall design, the industry invests and is responsible for the construction and operation. At present, the federal government is working hard to amend the communication law of 1934, demanding that the unnecessary restrictions on TV, cable TV, telephone, satellite and other telecommunications means be completely eliminated on the premise of safeguarding the interests of consumers, and encouraging mutual cooperation and competition among industries. At present, the Task Force has submitted three draft laws to the National Assembly. The new law has yet to be discussed and approved by Congress. Clinton's future-oriented investment plan shows the new attitude of the new government. However, these measures it has taken are difficult to produce immediate results. Therefore, it will not add much weight to the president's support rate.

Social welfare policy with heavy resistance

Reforming the current medical insurance system in the United States is the focus of the Clinton administration's social welfare policy. In this year's president's economic report, Clinton said: "Today, compared with the size of its economy, the United States spends more on health care than any advanced industrial country. However, we only cover a small part of the population, and we lag behind in important overall health indicators such as life expectancy and infant mortality. More than 65,438+05% of Americans-nearly 39 million people-didn't have insurance until 65,438+0992, and tens of millions of people will lose insurance if they are underinsured or unemployed. At the same time, the cost of medical care continues to rise, increasing the medical expenses and insurance premiums of American families and aggravating the budget crisis of governments at all levels. " This is a true portrayal of the current medical insurance situation in the United States. The health care reform plan submitted by Clinton to Congress focuses on solving four problems. First, there are still tens of millions of Americans who do not enjoy medical insurance; Second, the private insurance industry charges too much for people with poor health; Third, the current medical insurance lacks effective competition, resulting in hospitals and patients not caring about the cost; Fourth, insurance expenditure has become an unbearable burden in the government budget. To this end, Clinton proposed in his reform plan: (1) provide medical insurance for all Americans from 1998 65438+ 10/,so that every American can enjoy routine outpatient service, hospitalization, first aid, prevention, prescription and dispensing, rehabilitation, family health care and so on. The treatment of mental illness and various bad habits will also be included in the health care plan to a limited extent; (2) States are required to establish a "health alliance" for large consumer groups, which will collect insurance premiums, negotiate health plans with hospitals and insurance companies according to the principle of competition, and be responsible for managing expenses. All companies with less than 5000 employees must purchase insurance through health alliance; (3) Employers must pay at least 80% of the average health insurance premium for unmarried workers and at least 55% of the average health insurance premium for workers' families. However, the health insurance expenditure of a company with less than 5,000 employees shall not exceed 7.9% of the total wages. Enterprises with fewer than 75 employees and an average salary of less than $24,000 are eligible for government subsidies; (4) increase taxes. The cigarette tax will be raised from the current 24 cents per pack to 99 cents, and a payroll tax of 1% will be levied on companies with 5,000 or more workers who do not join the "insurance alliance", and the health alliance will be allowed to increase the premium by 2.5% for administrative expenses; (5) After 2000, limit the annual increase of health insurance premium to no more than the inflation rate, and set an upper limit for government medical expenditure.

This plan was put forward on1October 27th, 1993. Around this plan, the democratic and Republican parties launched a fierce offensive and defensive war. Representative Dole, the Republican minority leader, Representative gephardt, the Democratic majority leader of the House of Representatives, and Representative Mitchell, the Democratic majority leader of the Senate, all put forward their own amendments. The difference between gephardt's plan and Clinton's plan lies in delaying the implementation of universal health insurance for one year. The government mainly collects taxes by raising the cigarette tax by 45%, in addition to levying a sales tax of 2% on all insurance premiums; Enterprises with less than 100 employees can participate in the insurance plan named "third party medical care" by the government; It is not required to organize an "insurance alliance". The medical expenses of private pharmaceutical industry will not be controlled before 2000. Obviously, his position is a step backward from Clinton's plan. But still adhere to the principle of universal health insurance. Even if such a concession is made, it is estimated that 70 votes will be needed to get the plan passed.

On August 3, the same day as Gephardt, Mitchell also put forward his own plan. This is more moderate than Gephardt's plan. It only requires that 95% Americans enjoy health insurance by the year 2000; States are not forced to establish health care alliances; The source of funds mainly depends on reducing the cost of medical treatment and medical assistance, and employers are no longer required to bear 80% of the insurance premium; After 2002, if 95% of Americans cannot be included in national insurance, employers are required to help workers pay insurance premiums in some States; For enterprises with less than 25 employees, the employer shall bear 50% of the insurance premium, and the employer with less than 25 employees shall not bear the insurance premium; The biggest tax increase is the additional tax of 1.75% on medical insurance, the consumption tax on guns and ammunition, and the insurance premium of the wealthy elderly who enjoy medical care. Whether this plan can be passed depends on 10 Democratic senators who are still on the sidelines.

Republican Congressman Dole's plan is clearly against Clinton. Its plan is verbally aimed at making all Americans enjoy health insurance. In fact, it will exclude a large part of the poor from medical insurance, only provide subsidies to the poorest uninsured workers, and allow but not require enterprises and individuals to form insurance alliances and other organizations. Employers or individuals are not required to purchase insurance; Enterprises with 2 to 50 workers will be able to purchase federal employee health insurance. Do not increase any taxes; The pre-tax deduction of 25% of insurance premium paid by self-employed persons was changed to100%; There is no price control on medical expenses.

If we compare the above four schemes, we can see that the fundamental difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party lies in whether to provide universal health insurance; Who will bear the cost and whether to control the growing medical insurance expenditure. These problems involve the interests of tens of millions of people who have not enjoyed medical insurance so far, the interests of business owners and the vested interests of the health care industry and insurance companies. Clinton obviously wants to seize the banner of safeguarding the interests of the former, while Dole stands in the position of safeguarding the interests of the latter. Gephardt and Mitchell plan to make some concessions while maintaining the basic spirit of the Clinton plan. Mitchell now says he is confident that he can reach an agreement with moderates on a limited reform plan. However, the prospect of a congressional recess is fading. It is reported that Clinton has sent a pessimistic signal that he will no longer take health care reform as the focus of this year's congressional meeting and will veto any bill that does not focus on universal health care. It seems that the medical system, once advertised as the banner of Clinton's reform, has run aground at least this year under the resistance of all parties. Let's see what happens next year.

Aggressive trade policy

Clinton's foreign trade policy has both inheritance and new characteristics. It has inherited two major changes of Reagan and Bush administrations: one is to change from free trade to fair trade, and to implement protectionism in the name of fair trade; The second is to change from multilateralism to bilateralism and promote multilateralism bilaterally. The new features of the Clinton administration's foreign trade policy are as follows: First, it emphasizes the improvement of national competitiveness and regards expanding exports as the only way to raise workers' wages and revitalize the American economy. The second is to internationalize "radicalism" and open the international market with the stick of "sanctions".

In the field of trade, Clinton is proud of his achievements in two things: first, the establishment of the North American Free Trade Area; Second, the long Uruguay Round negotiations were finally completed at the last minute.

The signing of NAFTA is not only the success of bilateral negotiations, but also strengthens Clinton's position in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and Uruguay Round negotiations. So when this agreement was passed in Congress, Clinton was very proud. The significance of establishing NAFTA can not only be seen from the complementary geo-economic advantages of the United States, Canada and Mexico, but more importantly, it is a part of the global strategy of the United States and a powerful bridgehead established by the United States for itself in the economic triangle battle. After this step, the next step is to establish an "American Economic Circle" and a "Pacific Community" covering the entire western hemisphere from north to south. Naturally, the realization of this overall strategic intention cannot be achieved overnight, but as long as the United States always takes the initiative and firmly grasps the dominant position in this process, it can ensure that it will gain a superior position over Japan and Europe in the struggle to seize the American and Asian markets.

Clinton's role in NAFTA was to eliminate the interference of most Democrats, trade unions and environmentalists and facilitate the signing of the agreement, which was reached by signing three subsidiary agreements.

In terms of labor protection, the North American labor cooperation agreement was signed, demanding that the use of child labor be prohibited, and that health and safety standards and minimum wages be set. In addition, the Mexican government also promised to link the increase of the minimum wage with the increase of labor productivity. On labor issues, the United States also reserves the right to use Article 30 1 of 1974 American Trade Law.

In terms of environmental protection, the North American Environmental Protection Committee and its office were established. A "Border Environment Plan" with a period of 10 was formulated to comprehensively solve the problems of air, soil and water quality and the treatment of hazardous wastes. Two institutions have been established to provide funds for the establishment of environmental protection infrastructure on the US-Canada border.

After many twists and turns, the NAFTA agreement was finally signed at 1993 1 1.07. The short-term benefit it brings to the United States is that it can expand exports. According to statistics, 199 1 year, the United States exported a total of 422 billion US dollars, creating 7.2 million jobs, including1/kloc-0.8 billion US dollars exported to Canada and Mexico, creating 2/kloc-0.0 million jobs. By 1995, due to the growth of US capital goods exports to Mexico,175,000 jobs will be added. By then, 65,438+0,000 people in the United States will be employed in the US export industry to Mexico. While increasing employment, the wage level will also increase. According to statistics, the average wage of American export industry is higher than that of other industries 17%. The success of the Uruguay Round negotiations is also regarded by Clinton as his own achievement, because the negotiation strategy of the United States plays an important role. The protracted negotiations not only reflect the contradiction between the United States, Japan and Europe, but also reflect the conflict of interests between developed and developing countries led by the United States. Although reaching an agreement is beneficial to all countries in the world, the United States is clearly the biggest winner.

In addition to tariff reduction and exemption, the most important thing for the United States is to gradually bring agricultural trade into the jurisdiction of GATT principles within six years. European countries promised to convert quotas of non-tariff barriers into tariffs and reduce them by 36%, while reducing agricultural product price subsidies by 20%. Although this achievement can not meet the requirements of the United States to completely abolish agricultural subsidies within 10, it has finally taken a big step forward; The second is that the basic principles of service trade have been incorporated into the new service trade agreement for the first time; Third, the issue of intellectual property rights has also been brought into GATT for the first time, and all countries have unanimously promised to protect trade-related patents, trademarks and copyrights and punish counterfeiting; Fourth, trade-related investment measures should be included in the agreement, and the restrictions on foreign investment should be gradually lifted. These four issues are related to the major interests of American foreign economic and trade activities. But it did not participate in all the previous negotiations of GATT. The United States attaches great importance to these issues and has made great progress in the US-Canada Free Trade Area negotiations and the US-Canada-Mexico Free Trade Area negotiations. The so-called bilateral promotion of multilateralism is to use these achievements to strengthen the position of the United States in the GATT negotiations, which is reflected in the final result of the Uruguay Round negotiations. However, in the eyes of Americans, this is only the beginning, and it has not fully realized the wishes of the United States.

At first, the United States opposed the establishment of the World Trade Organization, and finally made concessions. The United States is worried that after the entry into force of the organization, the United States will have to abide by the organization's arbitration in trade frictions, and can no longer rely on US domestic law to wave the big stick of Article 30 1. In his testimony to Congress, the Deputy Trade Representative of the United States claimed that after the entry into force of the new World Trade Organization, the United States could still take unilateral actions against so-called "unfair trade countries". He said that "the new trading system will not weaken the effective implementation of US trade laws, especially the implementation of Article 30 1 and anti-dumping laws". Fully show the face of power politics.

Although the United States gained a lot in the Uruguay Round negotiations, it failed to fully satisfy the appetite of domestic interest groups. Such as movies, audio-visual products and other services, have not been included in the rules of GATT under the resolute resistance of some countries. For another example, the financial industry and the telecommunications industry are also excluded from the agreement. Due to the protectionism of the American shipping industry itself, shipping is not within the scope of the agreement. In textiles, the quota system of multi-fiber agreement will be abolished in three steps before 2005, which is beneficial to developing countries, but the United States has not reached the level that developing countries hope to achieve in reducing high tariffs.

The United States, with the support of France, once asked to add a "social clause" to the agreement, the content of which was to link labor interests with international trade standards. ASEAN countries see through the West at a glance, and they want to use social provisions to force developing countries to either raise their labor costs to the agreed minimum level, or impose punitive special tariffs because their production costs are much lower than those in the West, and resist them. Finally, an agreement was reached to transfer this issue to the future World Trade Organization for discussion, thus breaking the deadlock.

Controversial financial policy

The above four policies were put forward by President Clinton in his 1994 presidential economic report as the overall economic strategy of the Clinton administration. Financial policy is not one of them, because under the American economic system, the Fed system is led by Congress. In fact, however, the president still has great influence on financial policy. During Clinton's two years in power, financial policy experienced a turning point from lowering interest rates to stimulating economic recovery and then raising interest rates to prevent inflation. Following the decision of the Federal Open Market Committee 1992 on February 4th, the federal funds rate was raised from 3% to 3.25%, and further raised to 3.5% on March 22nd. April 8 1, further increased to 3.75%. /kloc-in may of 0/7, the federal funds rate was raised to 4.5%, and the discount rate was raised from 3% to 3.5%. Raising interest rates four times in a row has a great impact on the US economy, causing heated discussion.

This decision of the Federal Reserve is mainly based on the so-called "natural unemployment rate". The Federal Reserve Act passed in the early years set "promoting maximum employment" as one of the policy objectives of the Federal Reserve, and the Humphrey-Hawkins Act passed in 1978 set the maximum employment as the unemployment rate not exceeding 4%. However, the monetary school believes that there is a natural unemployment rate where monetary policy does not work. In their view, due to the changes in economic conditions in recent years, the natural unemployment rate should be 6%-6.5%, not 4%. If policymakers ignore the natural unemployment rate and insist on achieving the goal of 4%, it will inevitably push the economy to a level beyond its potential capacity, which will only lead to inflation, eventually leading to a slowdown in economic growth and a sharp rise in unemployment rate. They believe that the unemployment rate in the United States has dropped from 7.4% in 1992 to 6.5% in February this year, and even dropped to 6.0% in May. In addition, the equipment utilization rate and economic growth rate are close to the warning line, and it is necessary to tighten monetary policy. The Fed calls this austerity policy neutral monetary policy, that is, a policy that neither stimulates nor hinders economic growth.

The fourth increase in interest rates by the Federal Reserve has caused great controversy in society. The American Chamber of Commerce accused the financial circles on Wall Street of not sacrificing the business circles on Main Street for their own benefit. The AFL-CIO also said that while there are still 8.4 million unemployed people and 6.6 million odd jobs in the United States, the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to pour cold water on the economy, which will only make the unemployed unable to find jobs. The Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on May 27th, asking Greenspan to explain the reasons for raising interest rates. The focus of the debate is why the Federal Reserve should put the brakes on the American economy, because the American economy has just improved and there is no sign of inflation. At the hearing, lawmakers asked Greenspan to promise not to raise interest rates in the future.

One month after this interest rate hike, due to the widening trade deficit with Japan, the exchange rate of the US dollar against the Japanese yen in the foreign exchange market fell below the 1: 100 mark on June 2. This puts the Fed in a dilemma between raising interest rates to save the dollar from falling and maintaining interest rates to prevent economic decline. After two months' observation and reflection, the Federal Reserve eliminated its concerns about the latter, and made a decision to raise the federal funds rate to 4.75% and the discount rate to 4% on August 16. Fed officials claim that this interest rate level is compatible with the potential economic growth capacity of the United States.

At first, the Clinton administration was dissatisfied with the sudden increase in long-term interest rates caused by the continuous increase in short-term interest rates by the Federal Reserve. However, after research, it believed that the Fed's approach could keep the US economy at a sustained and moderate growth level of 2.5%-3%, which was conducive to Clinton's election in 1996, so it supported the Fed's decision.

However, this interim agreement cannot completely eliminate the differences between the two sides on financial policy. The first sign of this divergence is that in the presidential economic report of 1993, economic advisers denied that the natural unemployment rate had changed greatly since the early 1970s, and emphasized that the current unemployment rate far exceeded the natural unemployment rate. At the same time, it is unscientific to claim that the measures to stimulate the economy have exceeded the natural unemployment rate by accelerating inflation, because there are still many factors that affect the acceleration of inflation. Another sign is that Blind and Greenspan, the new vice-chairmen of the Federal Reserve with Keynesian views, expressed different policy objectives of the Federal Reserve at the annual meeting of the Federal Reserve. Blind argued that western central banks should consider both inflation and employment when determining the interest rate level. Greenspan, on the other hand, advocated amending the federal reserve act to take controlling inflation as the sole goal of interest rate policy.

Internal contradictions of Clinton's internal and external economic policies

What kind of objective evaluation should be given to Clinton's domestic and foreign economic policies in the past two years? First of all, Clinton's "activist" government intervention policy is of positive significance to revitalizing the American economy. With the development of capitalist economy, it is impossible to achieve a virtuous circle and balanced development of the economy only by relying on the invisible hand of market regulation. The result of 12 years "laissez-faire" policy of neo-conservatism was the structural imbalance of national economy caused by large deficit, and its bad consequences were exposed in the ninth economic recession in the United States. Clinton did the opposite, which is the requirement of the times. Second, Clinton's strategy to revitalize the American economy, eliminate structural imbalances, increase accumulation and expand investment; Improve life; The goal of strengthening international competitiveness can play a positive role in the American economy. As far as the policy itself is concerned, it is a better choice for the United States at present. Third, the American economy is currently in a period of high growth, but this is related to the periodicity of economic operation, which cannot be entirely attributed to Clinton's policy, but the policy is obviously playing a role.

If the objective evaluation says so, why do Americans support Clinton only 40%, while those who don't support him account for 55%? There seem to be many reasons for this problem. First of all, Clinton suffered many setbacks in politics and diplomacy. There are mistakes in decision-making and complicated factors in the struggle between the two parties. Secondly, it should be said that there are many contradictions within the economy.

First, the contradiction between excessive ambition and insufficient national strength.

In order to win votes, successive American presidents always make more wishes and deliver less, which is a common problem, and Clinton can't jump out of this trap. "Radicalism" is backed by national strength, but it is a pity that Clinton inherited the big deficit mess left by Reagan and Bush administrations, so his actions have to be constrained by many constraints. At this point, his situation is different from that of Kennedy and Johnson. The lack of financial resources of the federal government is one of the important reasons for Clinton's health care reform.

Second, the contradiction between the reality of multipolarization and the words and deeds of power politics.

After the cold war, the global pattern has become multipolar. Although the United States is still a super economic power, its strength is not as good as before, and it is difficult to go its own way. However, the concept lags behind the reality, and the Clinton administration is still ready to wield the 30 1 stick in its foreign economic policy. However, the reality is ruthless, and the relationship between the United States and its trading partners is no longer a unilateral charity or assistance from the United States, but a relationship of interdependence and mutual demand. Unilateral sanctions can only hurt both sides, and the United States will not benefit. This is also one of the reasons why the Clinton administration often runs into a wall in international negotiations, thus damaging its prestige.

Third, the contradiction between pluralistic reality and ideological intolerance.

The Clinton administration emphasizes promoting democracy and human rights in international economic cooperation. It is against the pluralistic ideology in the world to unify the whole country with American-style democracy and American definition of human rights. Diversified ideology comes from diversified economic base and social system. It was a good thing that they let a hundred flowers blossom, compete with each other and compete peacefully. The United States often accuses this country of totalitarian politics, and that country's authoritarian politics is also bossing around the so-called "dissidents." This goes beyond the international norm of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, which often leads to friction with many countries and the resulting bump into a wall, which also damages Clinton's reputation. It seems that if Clinton wants to improve the voter support rate and win the White House throne again, he should not only do a good job in domestic politics and economy, but also get along well with other countries in the world. It is important to abandon the mentality of a big country here.