(iPoster) From Decoupling to Friendshoring: U.S. Trade Narratives and Public Opinion

• In Event: Poster Session: International Political Economy I & Perspectives on Canadian Foreign Policy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: International Political Economy I

Abstract

In recent years, the world has witnessed a transition away from the liberal and free trade regime to one that incorporates economic security and protectionism. The United States has been leading the trend surrounding economic security and trade. What are the dominant economic and trade narratives today in the United States? To what extent do they resonate with the American public? To answer the above question, this proposed study seeks to identify emerging economic and trade paradigms in the United States and investigate the extent to which these narratives have been accepted domestically. Specifically, this study will examine all trade-related press briefings of the US Department of State since the beginning of the first Trump administration in 2016. I seek to find patterns and characteristics of three distinctive trade paradigms commonly identified in media and policy reports: decoupling, de-risking, and friendshoring. To give a brief definition: decoupling is associated with a complete cutoff of trade ties with adversarial countries such as China and Russia; de-risking emphasizes national security and potential risks associated with trade; friend-shoring focuses on shifting supply chains to like-minded partners and allies. Moreover, I will characterize the narratives associated with each of these paradigms by studying State Department rhetoric tied to each of them. The study then seeks to understand the degree to which these narratives resonate with the public in the United States.

The focus on US trade narratives is justified by the country’s internationally dominant position. As the world’s largest economy and political power, the United States is indeed at the forefront of shaping narratives in diverse areas of policymaking and global governance (Kose et al., 2017; Susskind and Vines, 2024). Illustratively, the establishment of the post-war liberal trade regime relied heavily on US diplomacy and financial underpinning (Ikenberry, 2011). Understanding which paradigms are currently being promoted by the US will hence help pinpoint the foundations of the newly emerging international trade regime. Moreover, the second research question, which investigates the public acceptance level of narratives associated with these paradigms, represents an important objective of not only the article but the overall thesis by allowing me to draw implications regarding the likely stability and durability of emerging trade paradigms.

In line with its two research questions, this study adopts a two-stage mixed-method approach. The first step includes a text-mining approach to analyze all press releases by the US Department of State under the Trump and Biden Administrations (from 2016 to 2024). Once patterns of key narratives have been analyzed, I will conduct a conjoint survey experiment on a nationally representative sample in the United States featuring the narratives associated with the three identified paradigms. The experiment will include two to three attributes (e.g., trade partner, security justification, value justification) with a few levels to create different profiles. Respondents will be asked to choose their preferred options from the two profiles. In addition, given the highly polarized political context (although trade issues seem to have reached bipartisan consensus), I will ask respondents about their political ideology and affiliation to form potential subgroups.

Overall, the proposed study seeks to contribute both empirically and theoretically to the growing importance of economic security in trade decision-making. Empirically, international trade is facing many uncertainties, from the rise of protectionist parties to new priorities assigned to security. This paper can therefore provide an invaluable and timely understanding of the emerging trend. Theoretically, recent scholarly work, especially in International Political Economy has paid close attention to the politicization of trade, a phenomenon where geopolitical and security considerations become increasingly important in trade decision-making, sometimes even more than economic calculus (see Meunier and Nicoladis, 2019; Hurrell, 2024). However, few have investigated the paradigms emerging to replace the liberal trade order. This study’s focus therefore contributes to the literature by offering empirical evidence of new trade paradigms resulting from the liberal decline. Moreover, testing the level of public resonance can further provide invaluable insights into the trajectory of dominance for the identified trade paradigms.

Author

• Diya Jiang, McGill University