The New Politics Of Trade

Alasdair Young analyzes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations and explores why they have proved so difficult to conclude. He sheds light on the limits of transatlantic cooperation and teases out the implications for the UK in post-Brexit trade negotiations and for facing a more protectionist stance from the United States.

This is an introduction to the politics of trade unionism in contemporary Britain, assessing the major changes in legislation, policing and attitudes since 1979 as well as the broader social and economic trends to which these have been a response.

Imports pour into the United States, up by 79 percent in six years. The trade deficit more than doubles. The House of Representatives solidly rejects a bill that would liberalize global and regional trade and endorses import quotas for a major manufactured product by a two-to-one margin. Although at first glance these events of the 1990s might sound like past chapters of US trade politics, in fact the political dynamics have changed in significant ways. As the impact of globalization comes into focus, politically important constituencies have begun to resist trade liberalization. Labor and environmental groups in particular, demanding that their concerns be addressed, have succeeded in fracturing the long-standing, bipartisan, protrade coalition in Congress, and in the process have undercut US leadership in liberalizing global trade. This new study reexamines the landscape of trade politics. It shows how trade advocates and labor and environmental skeptics differ significantly in both their substantive views and their political and organizational cultures. The authors demonstrate how this new challenge differs from that of traditional trade protectionism, likening it instead to the debate a century ago over whether and how to regulate American capitalism for social purposes. The analysis leads to a set of recommendations aimed at constructive compromise and a new political foundation for US trade policy leadership.

Outcomes in major multilateral trade negotiations are conventionally explained as resulting from interests weighted by (trading) power. Offering a different overview of the concepts we use to talk about the international trade regime, this edited collection puts the ideational foundation of world trade politics centre stage, and critically examines the terms in which we make sense of world trade politics. The concepts used to make sense of world trade politics are often employed strategically, making some aspects of reality visible and others invisible. Reflecting upon ten key concepts from ‘trade’ itself to ‘protectionism’ and ‘justice’, this book poses two broad questions: first, how and by whom have the meanings of different terms used to describe, challenge and defend world trade politics been constructed? Second, how have the individual terms changed over time, and with what consequences? The editors and contributors draw on a broad range of theoretical approaches, from post-structuralism or cognitivism to normative theory, shedding new light on why certain trade issues and agendas win out over others, who benefits from the current system of trade governance, and what contemporary challenges the World Trade Organization faces. In doing so, the book speaks to a growing and diverse constructivist literature in International Political Economy. This book will be of interest to scholars, students and policy professionals working within International Relations, International Political Economy and economics.

This accessible, comprehensive and pertinent Handbook will be of interest to academics, researchers and students working in the fields of international politics, in particular political economy and foreign policy, and the economics of trade.¾ Practitio

As the world economy slides into the worst recession since the 1930s, there is fear that hard times will ignite a backlash against free trade policies and globalization more generally. This book explores the political and economic institutional foundations of the bargain of embedded liberalism and the ways domestic institutions shape how governments redistribute the risks and benefits of economic globalization. The author identifies the Anglo-American democracies, because of their majoritarian polities combined with decentralized, competitive economies, as uniquely vulnerable to the contemporary challenges of globalization and the most susceptible to a backlash against it.

Tony Heron examines recent global policy responses to the erosion of non-reciprocal tariff and quota preferences caused trade liberalizing by focusing on a sample of small, middle income countries which have historically enjoyed favourable access to OECD markets.