America and Trade Liberalization: The Limits of Institutional Reform

2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Goldstein ◽  
Robert Gulotty
Keyword(s):  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Import Competition ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Tariff Reductions

AbstractAmong scholars, delegation of power to the US president in 1934 is widely believed to have been a necessary requisite for tariff reductions in ensuing years. According to conventional wisdom, delegation to the president sheltered Congress from constituent pressure thereby facilitating the opening of the US economy and the emergence of the United States as a world power. This article suggests a revision to our understanding of just how that occurred. Through a close study of the US tariff schedule between 1928 and 1964, focusing on highly protected products, we examine which products were subject to liberalization and at what time. After 1934, delegation led to a change in trade policy, not because Congress gave up their constitutional prerogative in this domain but because presidents were able to target the potential economic dislocation that derives from import competition to avoid the creation of a congressional majority willing to halt the trade agreements program.

Preferential Trade Agreements as Stumbling Blocks for Multilateral Trade Liberalization: Evidence for the United States

2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 896-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Limão
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Detailed Data ◽  
Preferential Trade ◽  
Multilateral Trade ◽  
Multilateral Trade Liberalization ◽  
Tariff Reductions

Most countries are members of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The effect of these agreements has attracted much interest and raised the question of whether PTAs promote or slow multilateral trade liberalization, i.e., whether they are a “building block” or “stumbling block” to multilateral liberalization. Despite this long-standing concern with PTAs and the lack of theoretical consensus, there is no systematic evidence on whether they are actually a stumbling block to multilateral liberalization. We use detailed data on U.S. multilateral tariffs to provide the first systematic evidence that the direct effect of PTAs was to generate a stumbling block to its MTL. We also provide evidence of reciprocity in multilateral tariff reductions.

scholarly journals Trade shocks and youth jobs

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Olabisi
Keyword(s):  
Older Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Import Competition ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
Supplier Relationships ◽  
Trade Shocks ◽  
The Past ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis paper examines the impacts of trade on youth employment in the United States. The overarching goal is to link lessons from the decline of manufacturing jobs in the past decades to future prospects for the US economy. We find higher rates of job losses with exposure to import competition for US youth, than for older workers. Our analysis uses buyer–supplier relationships between sectors of the US economy to show that the direct effects of trade on the importing sectors underrepresent the impact of trade on jobs.

scholarly journals The Magic Bullet? The RTAA, Institutional Reform, and Trade Liberalization

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Hiscox
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institutional Innovation ◽  
Magic Bullet ◽  
Adequate Explanation ◽  
The Face ◽  
Societal Preferences

The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) of 1934 has long been heralded as a simple institutional reform with revolutionary consequences: namely, by changing the trade policymaking process in the United States, the RTAA is held responsible for the dramatic liberalization in U.S. policy beginning in the 1930s and 1940s. This article takes issue with this conventional wisdom. I argue that the standard accounts—which emphasize the importance of delegation for overcoming logrolling in Congress or for facilitating reciprocity in international trade negotiations—fail to provide an adequate explanation for just how the institutional innovation was achieved and sustained in the face of protectionist opposition. I suggest instead that trade liberalization was driven by exogenous changes in party constituencies and societal preferences that had crucial effects on congressional votes to extend the RTAA authority and liberalize trade after 1945. The preservation of the RTAA program was symptomatic rather than causal; as a consequence, it may well be abandoned in the future. The evolution of U.S. trade policy has been, and will continue to be, powerfully shaped by changes in the preferences of societal groups and in the positions taken by parties on the trade issue.

Military Subsidization of Human Capital and Gender Stratification in the US Economy

2021 ◽  
pp. 048661342098262
Author(s):  
Tyler Saxon
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Gender Stratification ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Capital Development ◽  
The Military

In the United States, the military is the primary channel through which many are able to obtain supports traditionally provided by the welfare state, such as access to higher education, job training, employment, health care, and so on. However, due to the nature of the military as a highly gendered institution, these social welfare functions are not as accessible for women as they are for men. This amounts to a highly gender-biased state spending pattern that subsidizes substantially more human capital development for men than for women, effectively reinforcing women’s subordinate status in the US economy. JEL classification: B54, B52, Z13

Rethinking U.S. National Security after Covid19

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda J. Bilmes
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emerging Diseases ◽  
Defense Spending ◽  
Federal Spending ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Military

AbstractThe United States has traditionally defined national security in the context of military threats and addressed them through military spending. This article considers whether the United States will rethink this mindset following the disruption of the Covid19 pandemic, during which a non-military actor has inflicted widespread harm. The author argues that the US will not redefine national security explicitly due to the importance of the military in the US economy and the bipartisan trend toward growing the military budget since 2001. However, the pandemic has opened the floodgates with respect to federal spending. This shift will enable the next administration to allocate greater resources to non-military threats such as climate change and emerging diseases, even as it continues to increase defense spending to address traditionally defined military threats such as hypersonics and cyberterrorism.

What's new in the "new" US course towards the DPRK?

2021 ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Alexander Zhebin
Keyword(s):  
North Korea ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negotiation Process ◽  
Republic Of Korea ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Problem ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Taiwan Straits

The article analyzes the prospects for US-North Korean and inter-Korean relations, taking into account the completed policy review of the new US administration towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as well as the results of the President of the Republic of Korea Moon Jae-in’s trip to Washington in May 2021 and his talks with US President Joe Biden. It is concluded that the “new" course proposed by the United States in relation to the DPRK will not lead to a solution to the nuclear problem of the Korean Peninsula and will interfere with the normalization of inter-Korean relations. During his visit to the US President Moon failed to obtain the US consent on ROK more “independent policy” toward North Korea. In spite of lavish investments into US economy and other concessions, Seoul was forced to promise to coordinate his approaches to the DPRK with US and Japan and support US position on Taiwan straits and South China Sea. The author argues that in the current conditions, the introduction of a regime of arms limitation and arms control in Korea should be a necessary stage on the way to complete denuclearization of the peninsula. The transition to a such method of the settlement of the nuclear problem could lead to the resumption of the negotiation process, mutual concessions, including reductions in the level of military-political confrontation, partial or large-scale lifting of economic sanctions in exchange for North Korea's restrictions of its nuclear weapon and missile systems.

scholarly journals Bad Biocitizens?: Latinos and the US "Obesity Epidemic"

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Greenhalgh ◽  
Megan Carney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Normal Weight ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Obesity Epidemic ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Let's Move

For years now, the United States has faced an "obesity epidemic" that, according to the dominant narrative, is harming the nation by worsening the health burden, raising health costs, and undermining productivity. Much of the responsibility is laid at the foot of Blacks and Latinos, who have higher levels of obesity. Latinos have provoked particular concern because of their rising numbers. Michelle Obama's Let's Move! Campaign is now targeting Latinos. Like the national anti-obesity campaign, it locates the problem in ignorance and calls on the Latino community to "own" the issue and take personal responsibility by embracing healthier beliefs and behaviors. In this article, we argue that this dominant approach to obesity is misguided and damaging because it ignores the political-economic sources of Latino obesity and the political-moral dynamics of biocitizenship in which the issue is playing out. Drawing on two sets of ethnographic data on Latino immigrants and United States-born Latinos in southern California, we show that Latinos already "own" the obesity issue; far from being "ignorant," they are fully aware of the importance of a healthy diet, exercise, and normal weight. What prevents them from becoming properly thin, fit biocitizens are structural barriers associated with migration and assimilation into the low-wage sector of the US economy. Failure to attain the normative body has led them to internalize the identity of bad citizens, assume personal responsibility for their failure, naturalize the conditions for this failure, and feel that they deserve this fate. We argue that the blaming of minorities for the obesity epidemic constitutes a form of symbolic violence that furthers what Berlant calls the "slow death" of structurally vulnerable populations, even as it deepens their health risks by failing to address the fundamental sources of their higher weights.

scholarly journals FINANCIAL SECTOR INTERCONNECTEDNESS AND MONETARY POLICY TRANSMISSION

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 1074-1101
Author(s):  
Alessandro Barattieri ◽  
Maya Eden ◽  
Dalibor Stevanovic
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Vector Autoregression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Vector Autoregression ◽  
Net Worth ◽  
Financial Variables ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Policy Shocks ◽  
Using Data

We present a stylized model that illustrates how interbank trading can reduce the sensitivity of lending to entrepreneurs' net worth, thus affecting the transmission mechanism of monetary policy through the credit channel. We build a model-consistent measure of interconnectedness and document that, in the United States, this measure has increased substantially during the period 1952–2016. Finally, interacting the measure of interconnectedness in a structural vector autoregression and a factor-augmented vector autoregression for the US economy, we find that the impulse responses of several real and financial variables to monetary policy shocks are dampened as interconnectedness increases. We confirm the same result using data from 10 Euro area countries for the period 1999–2016.

3. The US rise to world power, 1776–1945

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter LaFeber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines how the United States evolved as a world power during the period 1776–1945. It first considers how Americans set out after the War of Independence to establish a continental empire. Thomas Jefferson called this an ‘empire for liberty’, but by the early nineteenth century the United States had become part of an empire containing human slavery. Abraham Lincoln determined to stop the territorial expansion of this slavery and thus helped bring about the Civil War. The reunification of the country after the Civil War, and the industrial revolution which followed, turned the United States into the world’s leading economic power by the early twentieth century. The chapter also discusses Woodrow Wilson’s empire of ideology and concludes with an analysis of U.S. economic depression and the onset of the Cold War.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Charlie Laderman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
Eastern Question

This introductory chapter outlines why the American response to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians offers such critical insights into the US rise to world power, its evolving relationship with Britain, and the development of ideas on humanitarian intervention and global order at the turn of the twentieth century. It introduces the Armenian question, setting it within the larger Eastern question, and explains why the Ottoman Empire became a target for outside intervention by the European great powers in the nineteenth century. It explains why the United States, which had traditionally avoided political entanglement in the Near East even while its missionaries established an exceptional role there, began to take a greater interest in the region as its emergence as a great power coincided with the first large-scale Armenian massacres.

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