From Hegemony to Domination: Trump and the Future of the Liberal Trading Order

• In Event: Who Supports—and Opposes—the Liberal International Order?

Abstract

For over 70 years, the US has led the governing institutions and rules of the liberal international economic order, which have reflected and reinforced its primacy and served as an important channel for the projection of American power. Now, however, propelled by a surge of populist anti-trade sentiment, President Trump is abandoning the US’s traditional support for, and leadership of, the liberal trading order, and instead resorting to threats of aggressive unilateral trade actions or withdrawal from trade agreements to extract concessions from other states. Analysis of Trump’s retreat from free trade, international institutions and multilateralism has focused on domestic drivers, such as the rise of populism, but here I focus on international factors – specifically shifting power in global economic governance and the rise of China. I argue that the US’s resort to domination, or the raw use of coercive power, under President Trump is a response to the decline of US hegemony, in the Gramscian sense of the ability to rule through consent rather than simply coercion. Although the US maintains a preponderance of power in the international system, its capacity to direct and steer global trade governance has been sharply curtailed by the rise of China. China has consistently and persistently thwarted the US from achieving its objectives across a wide range of different areas of trade governance, at the WTO and beyond. The US’s ability to dominate the governing institutions of the trading system and to write the rules of global trade has thus been severely weakened.

Author

• Kristen Hopewell