Impact of Human Rights on U.S. Trade Practices

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to identify important political and economic factors thataffect human rights conditions. In conjunction, it is also important to identify common themes inhuman rights studies, particularly emphasizing the role of regime type. Lastly, this study’sprimary focus is to answer the question: do human rights have any impact on U.S. trade? Theend result shows that human rights are not an important factor to U.S. trade.The U.S. is balancing trade and human rights. Often, these ideas are in conflict. Thisstudy will examine the U.S. political, economic, and strategic motives in the context of humanrights, particularly focusing on bilateral trade engagement with other countries. The use of across-sectional time series analysis will be applied to examine trade and human rights from1981-2007. These results will provide an important empirical contribution to the literatures andmethodology in the social sciences regarding the relationship between human rights and trade.