US trade policy is evolving more slowly than expected

Significance Tai had meetings in Brussels with EU officials and business, labour and environmental leaders as she works to coalesce European support for addressing China's non-market trade practices. She is also preparing the ground for upcoming US efforts to initiate structural reforms to the WTO. Impacts New US trade deals will not be forthcoming as the administration has let its negotiating authority from Congress lapse. Biden will need to soften WTO rules on non-discriminatory treatment in government procurement to implement his 'Buy American' plans. Congressional support for confronting China, including on trade, will continue to harden.

US trade policy extends Trump's themes but adds nuance

Significance Biden's campaign promise of 'trade policy for the middle-class' remains far from fully formed. There is as much continuity with the course of his predecessor as there is divergence, although the tone and execution are different. Impacts The White House let its Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) from Congress lapse on July 1 and shows no intent to renew it. The expiry of the TPA puts a US-UK trade deal on indefinite hold. 'Unionised worker-centric trade policy' would be the best interpretation of Biden's 'trade policy for the middle class'. The myth that 'globalisation destroys US jobs' will continue to resonate as loudly with many Democrats as it does with Trump Republicans. Using trade as a means of economic coercion for political ends may be expanded to advance climate and environmental goals.

Polarized we trade? Intraparty polarization and US trade policy

Research indicates that polarization has led to an increasing dispersion between moderate and more extreme voters within both parties. Intraparty polarization supposedly affects the nature of interparty competition as it creates political space for new political realignments and the rise of anti-establishment candidates. This article examines the extent and impact of intraparty polarization in Congress on US trade policy. Specifically, the article examines whether (and which) trade policy preferences are distributed within and between both parties, as well as how intraparty polarization has influenced the outcome of US trade negotiations. It is theorized that intraparty polarization causes crosscutting legislative coalitions around specific trade policies and political realignments around ideological factions, with consequences for the outcome of trade negotiations. By relying on a unique dataset of congressional letters and co-sponsorship legislation, the article first derives trade policy preferences from members of Congress and computes their ideological means. Two contemporary cases of US trade policy are examined: The Transpacific Partnership Agreement and the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement. Via a structured-focused comparison of both cases, the paper finally assesses under which combinations of preference-based and ideology-based intraparty polarization Congress manages to ratify trade agreements. Findings suggest that both parties are intrinsically polarized between free trade and fair trade preferences yet show variance in their degree of ideology-based intraparty polarization. These findings contribute to existing work on bipartisanship as well as factions in the foreign policy realm, as it shows under which circumstances legislators can build crosscutting coalitions around foreign policies.

A Study on the US Trade Policy towards China

The Sino-US trade relationship has become one of the most important bilateral trade relationships in the world, however there are emerging more and more conflicts between them which may have negative impact on global trade. This paper reviews the US trade policy towards China and analyzes the reasons why these policies are changing over time. Based on related economic and political theories, this paper points out that there are political reasons, economic reasons and external factors that account for the changing of the US trade policies towards China. Furthermore, among these factors, the Sino-US political relationship laid the foundation of the bilateral trade relationship especially at an early stage, and the economic factor explains most of the bilateral trade after 2000. Meanwhile, the fluctuation of the bilateral trade could largely be explained by the struggle of the balance of the US domestic interest groups, and the balance of some external factors like international treaties.

Populism, Trade, and Trump’s Path to Victory

This chapter traces US populism back to President Andrew Jackson (1828–1836), providing early characteristics of a US populist leader. Major US populist issues have included immigration, the banking sector, and more recently, foreign trade. While Franklin D. Roosevelt’s populist-inspired New Deal reforms included trade liberalizing measures, postwar populists linked advancing globalization in the late twentieth century to elitist trade policy, inspiring new populist movements. Anti-trade populists were unsuccessful third-party presidential candidates until Donald Trump exploited this issue, capturing the Republican Party nomination and developing particularly provocative anti-trade rhetoric. He successfully integrated an anti-trade platform with a host of other populist issues, and vowed to alter US trade policy to “make America great again.”

US trade policy is putting at risk the sustainability of the generic/biosimilar industry and the drug supply chain

With the outbreak of the Coronavirus there is a new realization of the vulnerabilities of the U.S. drug supply chain. However, while such concerns may have been amplified by the pandemic, they preceded Covid-19 and were well documented before 2020. Indeed, in past years the U.S. Congress held several hearings addressing potential vulnerabilities in the U.S. drug supply chain, in part due to the increasing dependency on China as a dominant supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and some finished pharmaceutical products. These vulnerabilities go well beyond health policy and constitute a national security concern. The article addresses how U.S. trade policy plays a significant role in shaping the pharmaceutical industry at home and abroad and is in part responsible for some of the current vulnerabilities of the U.S. drug supply chain.

Progress on transatlantic trade relations will be slow

Significance It represents a strong message to Europeans that a return to transatlantic trade pre-2016 is not on the horizon, and instead US trade policy will be driven by the need to protect domestic manufacturers and workers from the negative impacts of globalization and address China-related concerns. Impacts A solution to the Airbus-Boeing state subsidy dispute is likely before the end of the year. The doubling to 50% of EU retaliatory tariffs on US imports, scheduled for June 1, is unlikely to shift Biden’s policy on protectionism. European cooperation with Washington on China may strengthen European leverage in other areas of the transatlantic relationship.

Legitimation strategies in discourse surrounding Sino-American trade friction: A case study of Chinese government white papers

This article reports a critical discourse analysis of the legitimation strategies used in two Chinese government white papers about trade frictions between China and the United States. Drawing on the legitimation framework advanced by van Leeuwen to political discourse, it shows how the white papers use four main legitimation strategies: authorization, moralization, rationalization, and integration. It argues that the Chinese government uses these strategies to legitimate its responses to US trade policy and delegitimate the US government’s motives for initiating/escalating tensions. This article also discusses how the use of these legitimation strategies draws from certain traditional Chinese cultural values, such as Confucianism, the culture of face, and collectivism. This article is a part of a larger research project studying discursive strategies in trade friction discourse and hopes to shed light on the attributes and functions of this type of discourse.

Tariff Pass-Through at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from US Trade Policy

We use microdata collected at the border and the store to characterize the price impact of recent US trade policy on importers, exporters, and consumers. At the border, import tariff pass-through is much higher than exchange rate pass-through. Chinese exporters did not lower their dollar prices by much, despite the recent appreciation of the dollar. By contrast, US exporters significantly lowered prices affected by foreign retaliatory tariffs. In US stores, the price impact is more limited, suggesting that retail margins have fallen. Our results imply that, so far, the tariffs’ incidence has fallen in large part on US firms. (JEL E31, F13, F14, F31, L11)