Abstract

What explains variation on Chile’s foreign trade and investment policies toward the United States? While previous studies have underscored international and country-level factors, this work focuses on how subnational economic differences lead to conflicts that shape the country’s policymaking. It examines Chile’s history of commercial policies toward the U.S., focusing on critical events between 1965 and 2005, finding that foreign trade and investment policy conflicts develop along regional lines during democratic periods and on issues where subnational differences in export dependence are stronger.