The emission coefficient due to classical electron–ion bremsstrahlung is calculated for a non-ideal plasma with an effective interaction. An approach due to Gould is used to obtain the emission coefficient for bremsstrahlung. It is shown that this result can also be derived from an approximation to the force–force correlation function assuming no correlations among particles. The trajectory for electrons in the effective potential is determined by the numerical solution of Newton's equation. Comparison is made with molecular dynamics results for the dynamical collision frequency.