In this study a comprehensive multivariate time-series model is built to explain American foreign policy toward the People's Republic of China, during the cold war era from 1948 to 1989.

This study hypothesizes that the major barriers to expanded trade between the U.S. and Eastern Europe are systemic in nature. Using this approach, each political/ economic system is examined in an attempt to define the obstacles to foreign trade expansion, to describe the most important systemic and political factors at work, and to demonstrate how they have determined and will continue to shape the economic relationships between the U.S. and the countries of Eastern Europe. A final synthesis presents the two systems in a unified picture of the economic environment and concludes that significant trade expansion is unlikely in the near future due to basic systemic incompatibilities which impede the resolution of key foreign trade problems.