Suchergebnisse

This article examines the role of national-level politics and economics on the setting of supranational trade policy within the European Union (EU). It argues that, though EU member states must have a uniform tariff schedule, significant variation remains in the average, trade-weighted tariff because each country has a different bundle of imports into each country. Thus, some countries import more high-tariff goods than others. This article argues that a significant part of this variation is intentional, because countries know which goods they import. Therefore, countries that prefer protection push for tariffs on products they import whereas countries that prefer free trade push for liberalization on products they import, with these preferences being driven by the amount of institutional access provided to interest groups and the economic conditions in the member states. This argument is tested with regression analyses of a panel of average tariff rates in the EU member states and the tariff schedule agreed to by the EU at the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

The standard embedded liberalism argument for increasing free trade after World War II is that countries have compensated those hurt by trade and, therefore, have reduced opposition to free trade policies. This argument relies on opposition to trade being motivated by personal economic effects of trade; however, recent work has increasingly found other motivations for protectionism, calling into question the sustainability of embedded liberalism. This article argues that this threat to embedded liberalism will grow worse as populism increases, which leads to both more nationalistic and more economic opposition to trade, which is only partially offset by other non-economic opposition (most notably, fair trade) decreasing. This article offers a conceptual framework for the different types of opposition to trade and how increasing populism influences its composition. The framework is supported by descriptive statistics of public opinion on trade policy in the US over the past two decades, encompassing trade opinions before and during the global financial crisis, as well as during the rise of global populist movements starting around 2016. We conclude the article with policy implications regarding the multi-sided threat to free trade and how policymakers can confront the evolving challenges to embedded liberalism.

The complicated and multi-layered policymaking process in the European Union presents private interests, such as business firms, with an interesting strategic choice of whom and how to lobby. As the costs of lobbying at the domestic level increase, firms are expected to, instead, devote their resources to lobbying at the European level. Specifically, this article examines how domestic access points and domestic partisanship affect the costs and benefits of lobbying at the domestic versus European level. Using data on firm-level decisions to lobby the EU, this research finds that in countries where is it more costly (or less beneficial) to lobby domestically, firms are more likely to lobby at the EU level.

The political economy of trade literature argues that compensating those who lose from trade is an important component of maintaining public support for free trade, a linkage known as the compensation hypothesis or embedded liberalism thesis. Previous research has found support for many elements of the causal chain underlying embedded liberalism; however, there has been little research on the most crucial element of the causal chain, namely that compensation policies lead to increased support for trade. This article provides a direct test of the compensation hypothesis using a survey-based experiment conducted in the United States that exposes half of the respondents to knowledge of compensation programs and then asks for their opinion on trade policy. The article explores whether knowledge of compensation increases support for trade as well as who is influenced by this knowledge and, thus, provides a crucial test of the embedded liberalism thesis. Adapted from the source document.