Trump’s Tariffs: An Authoritarian Inscription of U.S. Trade Posture

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Geopolitics (Table 16)

Abstract

This article develops a Cultural Political Economy account of contemporary trade governance to explain the authoritarian turn in U.S. trade policy under the Trump administration. Drawing on Polanyian theories of market backlash and Sum and Jessop’s framework of economic imaginaries, semiosis, and institutional selectivity, the analysis shows how trade policy operates simultaneously as material regulation and meaning-making. Empirically, the article examines Trump-era tariffs as a case of authoritarian trade statecraft, demonstrating how narratives of national decline, foreign predation, and executive resolve were selectively institutionalized through delegated trade authority, discretionary enforcement, and transactional exemptions. Rather than representing a return to traditional protectionism, Trump’s trade policy re-embedded markets through executive discretion, coercive unilateralism, and patronage. By integrating trade shocks, racialized populism, and hegemonic decline within a Cultural Political Economy framework, the article reframes trade policy as a central site of contemporary state transformation and offers a generalizable approach to analyzing post-neoliberal governance.

Author

• Michael C Dreiling, University of Oregon