The article is devoted to the issues of historical and legal development of the legal regulation of the participation of local governments in international and foreign economic relations. The author has studied the provisions of all basic laws on local self-government since 1991, which highlight the norms that consolidate the powers of local self-government at various stages of its modern development in the field of international relations and foreign economic relations, which show the positive and negative aspects of the formation of a modern three-level model (federal, regional and municipal level) legal regulation of the mechanism of implementation by local governments of their powers in the field of international and foreign economic relations. Using methods of analysis and synthesis developed and tested by constitutional law, municipal law science, as well as the general theory of state and law, Based on the results of the study, the author concludes that it is necessary to further improve regulatory regulation in this area as one of the directions for improving the effectiveness of local government bodies in addressing issues of direct support for the livelihoods of the population in the context of sanctions restrictions in the world and the formation of new aspects of local government development in our country within the framework of building a centralized unified system of public authority in the Russian Federation.