Divided government and U.S. trade policy: theory and evidence

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Lohmann ◽  
Sharyn O'Halloran
Keyword(s):  
Trade Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Divided Government ◽  
Constraint Forces ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
White House ◽  
Policy Theory ◽  
The U.S

If different parties control the U.S. Congress and White House, the United States may maintain higher import protection than otherwise. This proposition follows from a distributive politics model in which Congress can choose to delegate trade policymaking to the President. When the congressional majority party faces a President of the other party, the former has an incentive to delegate to but to constrain the President by requiring congressional approval of trade proposals by up-or-down vote. This constraint forces the President to provide higher protection in order to assemble a congressional majority. Evidence confirms that (1) the institutional constraints placed on the President's trade policymaking authority are strengthened in times of divided government and loosened under unified government and (2) U.S. trade policy was significantly more protectionist under divided than under unified government during the period 1949–90.

Implications of the 2012 U.S. Election for U.S. Policy in Africa’s Great Lakes Region

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-191
Author(s):  
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Lakes Region ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
White House ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
The U.S

Abstract:While Africans are generally satisfied that a person of African descent was reelected to the White House following a campaign in which vicious and racist attacks were made against him, the U.S. Africa policy under President Barack Obama will continue to be guided by the strategic interests of the United States, which are not necessarily compatible with the popular aspirations for democracy, peace, and prosperity in Africa. Obama’s policy in the Great Lakes region provides an excellent illustration of this point. Since Rwanda and Uganda are Washington’s allies in the “war against terror” in Darfur and Somalia, respectively, the Obama administration has done little to stop Kigali and Kampala from destabilizing the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and looting its natural resources, either directly or through proxies. Rwanda and Uganda have even been included in an international oversight mechanism that is supposed to guide governance and security sector reforms in the DRC, but whose real objective is to facilitate Western access to the enormous natural wealth of the Congo and the Great Lakes region.

The Clinton Administration and Africa: White House Involvement and the Foreign Affairs Bureaucracies

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
John F. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Clinton Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
White House ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Both continuity and change capture the evolving role of the Clinton White House in the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa. Elements of continuity are reflected in a familiar pattern of relationships between the White House and the principal foreign policy bureaucracies, most notably the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense (Pentagon), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and more recently the U.S. Department of Commerce. As cogently argued in Peter J. Schraeder’s analysis of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa during the Cold War era, the White House has tended to take charge of U.S. African policies only in those relatively rare situations perceived as crises by the president and his closest advisors. In other, more routine situations—the hallmark of the myriad of U.S. African relations—the main foreign policy bureaucracies have been at the forefront of policy formulation, and “bureaucratic dominance” of the policymaking process has prevailed. Much the same pattern is visible in the Clinton administration, with the exception of President Clinton’s trip to Africa in 1998. Until that time, events in Somalia in 1993 served as the only true African crisis of the administration that was capable of focusing the ongoing attention of President Clinton and his closest advisors. Given that the United States is now disengaged from most African crises, Africa has remained a “backwater” for the White House and the wider foreign policymaking establishment.

Islam as a Platform for Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
David Belt
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
White House ◽  
Political Entrepreneurs ◽  
The U.S

Why, in the aftermath of 9/11, did a segment of the U.S. popular security experts, political elite, media, and other institutions classify not just al-Qaeda but Islam itself as a security threat, thereby countering the prevailing professional consensus and White House policy that maintained a distinction between terrorism and Islam?Why did this “politically incorrect” or counternarrative expand and degenerate into a scare over the country’s “Islamization” by its tiny Muslim population? Why is this security myth so convincing that legislators in two dozen states introduced bills to prevent the Shariah’s spread and a Republican presidential front-runner exclaimed:“I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it”? This analysis offers a framework that conceptualizes popular discourses as highly interested fields of political struggle, deepens the prevailing characterization of this part of the U.S. popular discourse as “Islamophobia,” and analyzes how it has functioned politically at the domestic level. Specifically, it examines how a part of the conservative elite and institutions, political entrepreneurs already involved in the ongoing culture wars, seized upon Islam in the emotion-laden wake of 9/11 as another opportune site to advance their struggle against their domestic political opponents, “the Left,” and the more progressive societal institutions and culture in general.

The Stimulus of Prohibition: A Critical History of the Global Narcotics Trade

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred W. McCoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Illicit Drugs ◽  
Control Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
White House ◽  
National Drug ◽  
The U.S

The current war on drugs being waged by the United States and United Nations rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the global nar­cotics traffic. In 1998, for example, the White House issued a National Drug Con­trol Strategy, proclaiming a 10-year program “to reduce illegal drug use and avail­ability 50 percent by the year 2007,” thereby achieving “the lowest recorded drug-use rate in American history.” To this end, the U.S. program plans to reduce foreign drug cultivation, shipments from source countries like Colombia, and smuggling in key transit zones. Although this strategy promises a balanced attack on both supply and demand, its ultimate success hinges upon the complete eradi­cation of the international supply of illicit drugs. “Eliminating the cultivation of il­licit coca and opium,” the document says in a revealing passage, “is the best ap­proach to combating cocaine and heroin availability in the U.S.” (U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy 1998: 1, 23, 28). Similarly, in 1997 the new head of the United Nations Drug Control Program, Dr. Pino Arlacchi, announced a 10-year program to eradicate all illicit opium and coca cultivation, starting in Afghanistan. Three years later, in the United Nation’s World Drug Report 2000, he defended prohibition’s feasibility by citing China as a case where “comprehensive narcotics control strategies . . . succeeded in eradicat­ing opium between 1949 and 1954”— ignoring the communist coercion that al­lowed such success. Arlacchi also called for an “end to the psychology of despair” that questions drug prohibition, and insisted that this policy can indeed produce “the eradication of coca and opium poppy production.” Turning the page, however, the reader will find a chart showing a sharp rise in world opium production from 500 tons in 1981 to 6,000 tons in 2000— a juxtaposition that seems to challenge Ar-lacchi’s faith in prohibition (Bonner 1997; Wren 1998a, 1998b; United Nations 2000d, 1–2, 24). Examined closely, the United States and United Nations are pur­suing a drug control strategy whose success requires not just the reduction but also the total eradication of illicit narcotics cultivation from the face of the globe. Like the White House, the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) re­mains deeply, almost theologically committed to the untested proposition that the prohibition of cultivation is an effective response to the problem of illicit drugs.

2 Mexico and the U.S.: Discord Among Neighbors

Worldview ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-10
Author(s):  
Denis Goulet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Border Studies ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
White House ◽  
The U.S

Mexico's two thousand-mile border with the United States is unarmed, but it remains the locus of sharp conflicts. Last October, House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill, bowing to pressure from the Hispanic Caucus, withdrew the Simpson- Mazzoli bill on immigration reform over White House objections that "it is in the best interests of all Americans to have the nation regain control of its borders." Jorge Bustamante, director of Mexico's Center for Border Studies, argues, however, that such a bill would "leave all migrant workers, whether documented or not, in a state of virtual slavery, since they will have no access to the courts to plead for justice."

Can Information Decrease Political Polarization? Evidence From the U.S. Taxpayer Receipt

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 736-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik P. Duhaime ◽  
Evan P. Apfelbaum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
White House ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Baseline Levels ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
High Level ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Do So

Scholars, politicians, and laypeople alike bemoan the high level of political polarization in the United States, but little is known about how to bring the views of liberals and conservatives closer together. Previous research finds that providing people with information regarding a contentious issue is ineffective for reducing polarization because people process such information in a biased manner. Here, we show that information can reduce political polarization below baseline levels and also that its capacity to do so is sensitive to contextual factors that make one’s relevant preferences salient. Specifically, in a nationally representative sample (Study 1) and a preregistered replication (Study 2), we find that providing a taxpayer receipt—an impartial, objective breakdown of how one’s taxes are spent that is published annually by the White House—reduces polarization regarding taxes, but not when participants are also asked to indicate how they would prefer their taxes be spent.

scholarly journals IS PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S CURRENT TRADE POLICY AREAL THREAT TO INTERNATIONALTRADE ORDER? LEGAL AND POLICY ASSESMENT

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 425-438
Author(s):  
Piotr KOBIELSKI
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Poultry Meat ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Trade Disputes ◽  
White House ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Trade War

The purpose of this article is to answer the question whether the current trade policy of the President Donald Trump’s administration, aimed at greater protectionism and isolationism in international trade, may result in undermining or even dismantling international trade order as we know it for the last several decades. Taking into account unfolding trade war between the United States and the People’s Republic of China special focus is given to potential new trade warbetween the US and the European Union. In order to narrow the scope of the paper’s analysis and to best illustrate the prospect of the EU-US trade war special attention is given to historical and current trade disputes between both parties over agri-food products, including hormone-treated beef, bananas, GMOs, poultry meat treated with bactericidal substances, Spanish olives and American soybeans. In conclusion of this paper it is explained thatdue to several reasons the new US-EU trade waris highly unlikely. This said it is also concluded that current stance in international trade taken by the White House, although very controversial and openly confrontational, poses no real threat to modern international trade order.

Islam as a Platform for Politics: The Post-9/11 U.S. Conservative Popular Security Discourse

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Belt
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
White House ◽  
Security Discourse ◽  
Political Entrepreneurs ◽  
The U.S

Why, in the aftermath of 9/11, did a segment of the U.S. popular security experts, political elite, media, and other institutions classify not just al-Qaeda but Islam itself as a security threat, thereby countering the prevailing professional consensus and White House policy that maintained a distinction between terrorism and Islam? Why did this “politically incorrect” or counternarrative expand and degenerate into a scare over the country’s “Islamization” by its tiny Muslim population? Why is this security myth so convincing that legislators in two dozen states introduced bills to prevent the Shariah’s spread and a Republican presidential front-runner exclaimed: “I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it”? This analysis offers a framework that conceptualizes popular discourses as highly interested fields of political struggle, deepens the prevailing characterization of this part of the U.S. popular discourse as “Islamophobia,” and analyzes how it has functioned politically at the domestic level. Specifically, it examines how a part of the conservative elite and institutions, political entrepreneurs already involved in the ongoing culture wars, seized upon Islam in the emotion-laden wake of 9/11 as another opportune site to advance their struggle against their domestic political opponents, “the Left,” and the more progressive societal institutions and culture in general.

U.S.-Canada Free Trade: What's in It for the U.S.?

1984 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney Weintraub
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Gross National Product ◽  
European Economic Community ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
Major Trading Partner ◽  
The U.S

Trade policy has played a larger role in the internal and international relations of Canada than of the United States, certainly in the last half century. There are many reasons for this: The Canadian economy is more open than that of the United States (e.g., merchandise exports as a percentage of gross national product were 30% in Canada and 7% in the United States in 1982); the United States is far more dominant in Canada's trade than any single country or group of countries such as the European Economic Community is in U.S. trade (in recent years about 70% of Canada's exports have been sent to the United States and more than 70% of its imports came from the United States; for the United States, about 15% of its exports in recent years went to Canada, its major trading partner, and between 15% and 20% of its imports have come from Canada); and with this double dependence on trade and on a single market, a selfinterested foreign policy must concentrate on trade policy (Grey, 1981: 3-4).

Building a Model Public History Program: The Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
KRISTIN L. AHLBERG
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Public History ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
State Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
White House ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Outreach Programs ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The U.S

Abstract The Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for the production and publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States series, has survived hard times with respect to human and financial resources and public criticism, in the last decade of the twentieth century, to emerge as a model for the conduct of public history at the onset of the twenty-first century. The Office meets the mission of the State Department by providing policy-supportive historical studies for the Secretary of State, other State Department principals, and the White House and by engaging in an ever-expanding series of historical outreach programs aimed at new and old audiences. Serving its institutional client in this way has allowed the Office to increase its connections and find common ground not only with diplomatic historians but also with public historians and others in the larger historical profession.

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