Pakistan is unpicking official barriers to trade, after last year offering most-favoured nation trading status to India (reciprocating India's 1996 offer).

ECONOMIST: India-Pakistan relations

Until now, there has been just enough support in Congress to grant China permanent normal trading relations (once known misleadingly as most-favoured-nation status) later this year as the last step before it joins the World Trade Organisation.

ECONOMIST: Impatient China

Therefore he intends to lead the coming fight against renewing China's most-favoured-nation trading status.

ECONOMIST: Gary Bauer and the virtue deficit

Late last year Pakistan formally said it would reciprocate a longstanding Indian offer of most-favoured-nation trading status.

ECONOMIST: Wary of China, India tries to charm its neighbours

He has called for an end to aid to Russia and the revoking of China's most-favoured-nation trading status.

ECONOMIST: The Helms-Weld war

American investors in China, such as Boeing and Motorola, regularly throw their weight against the anti-Chinese lobby in Congress, which tries to deprive China of its most-favoured-nation trade status each spring.

ECONOMIST: America��s dose of Sinophobia

The administration also promised to help get rid of smaller irritants such as the Jackson-Vanik amendment of the 1970s, a cold-war relic that denies Russia most-favoured-nation trading status because of Soviet restrictions on Jewish emigration.

ECONOMIST: Rock-solid allies? No. But certainly enemies no longer

Members of Congress also have joined the fray, raising the stakes at a time when the Clinton administration is already in the midst of a lobbying effort to convince reluctant lawmakers to approve permanent Normal Trade Relations status with China (formerly known as most-favoured-nation trading relations).

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy