Foreign economic policy

Foreign economic policy is a new concept covering the influence of the state not only on the flow of goods but also factors of production. It is a descendant of the foreign trade policy formulating the principles of the country’s influence on entities participating in international commodity turnover. In the second half of the 20th century, however, the flow of services, capital, technology and labour force between different countries and groups of countries also became another important component of international economic relations next to international commodity turnover. It thereby became necessary to supplement foreign trade policy with service, capital, technology, immigration, and other policies [ ]

The concept of foreign economic policy is, thus, connected with the state ‘competence to make decisions on foreign economic relations. These powers can be more or less extensive due to internal as well as external reasons. In the case of the former it is the economic model that determines the powers of the state; under liberal economy conditions where individual economic entities play the principal role in economic relations, the scope of the state's powers is narrower, limitation of liberalism being accompanied by growth of the powers of the state.
In the case of the latter, where the scope of the state’s powers is determined by external reasons, an autonomic policy and an agreement policy can be distinguished.” The autonomic policy gives the state unlimited opportunities to influence economic relations with foreign countries. It is simple and easy to conduct, stemming solely from internal reasons specific to a given country. Its drawback, however, is the fact that it can generate retorts, that is retaliatory actions by foreign partners.
The agreement policy means that decisions made by the state are agreed with foreign partners. While being more difficult to conduct, it is, however, free from retaliatory actions.
Foreign economic policy should be, first of all, active, which means that it cannot be the result of the behaviour of economic entities. The active character of foreign economic policy consists, on the one hand, of initiating actions that are not taken by economic entities on their own and, on the other hand, in restricting activities unfavourable from the point of view of the country as a whole. Foreign economic policy has an important role to perform, especially at a time when discrepancies