Populism And Regional Order

A hegemon believes that its international trade policy not only contributes to various self-interests as global hegemony,but are subject to the trade politics among its domestic interest groups.Being the very sole global hegemon since the end of the Cold War,the United States has great economic and strategic interests in East Asia.At the domestic and system levels,the hegemonic trade politics of the United States mainly considers the direct balance between benefits of economic expansion and costs of social protection,as well as the balance between benefits of capital expansion and costs of order maintenance respectively.However,the empirical evidence of East Asia regional process,multilateral RTAs and the development of East Asian regional production network shows that the United States has not succeeded in establishing and maintaining an East Asian economic order being in line with its hegemonic interests after the end of the Cold War.The outbreak of global financial crisis in 2008 and the rise of American populist leaders in 2016 have caused a major shift in the US trade politics in East Asia,indicating that both systemic and domestic factors had an impact on the US trade policy logic.What are the motivations behind the logic of the leading countries'international trade policies?This PhD dissertation will then focus on the abovementioned core problem.This dissertation argues that after the end of the Cold War,the US government gradually formed its East Asian trade policy-making dominated by the neoliberalist establishment elites and tended to be multilateral liberalized in order to safeguard interests of global and regional hegemony.The expansion of global value chain has then reconstructed its trade policy logic of these double movements.Domestic populism and East Asian regional order j ointly form the core of double-movement logic affecting trade policy-making at the domestic and systemic levels respectively.The establishment elites have molded both East Asian regional production networks and regional economic order that are conducive to the capital accumulation of United States multinationals,causing power distributional imbalances at both domestic and international levels,namely domestically between US multinationals and labors,and systemically between leading and rising powers of the East Asian economic order.While the United States obtains abundant capital gains in East Asia through its hegemonic position of strength,its hegemony as a regional economic leader has been confronted with a strong challenge from the rising power.Before the outbreak of the economic crisis,the accelerating expansion of global value chain compensates for the demands of reverse movement at both domestic and systemic levels of the US.After the outbreak of the crisis,the expansion of global value chain slowed down abruptly,and the double-movement logic at both international and domestic levels has been completely out of balance.Domestically,populist social movements gradually form a major political force;systemically,the crisis-driven process of East Asian integration has been significantly accelerated,threatening both the hegemonic power of strength and economic interests of the US in East Asia.This dissertation studies the US course of trade policy making regarding East Asia since the end of the Cold War,empirically covering four full US presidencies from Bill Clinton,George W.Bush,and Barack Obama to Donald Trump,as well as the incumbent presidency of Joe Biden.Its empirical case studies is highlighted with upto-date trade policymaking since the first populist US presidential term.Its theoretical analyses focus on interactions between global value chain,US populism,and East Asia regional order,examining the hegemon's double-movement logic of its international trade policymaking,and supplementing the evolution of hegemonic stability theory in the process of globalization.At the same time,following the framework of international political economy,this dissertation also explains theoretically hegemonic paths of action against changes of global and regional orders as well as competition with the rising power.After the Cold War ends,the world market under the global system has formally taken shape.The globalization process characterized with economic interdependence has accelerated greatly since then,constituting essential and solid systemic bases of the US international economic policy.Relying on its hegemonic alliance system structured in East Asia during the Cold War,the US manages to play a leading role in the AsiaPacific regional economic cooperation and attaches its importance to the economic interests of capital expansion as a neoliberal hegemon.After the outbreak of the global financial crisis,the double-movement trade logic of the neoliberal establishment elites has been acceleratively imbalanced.US populism and China's rapid rise in East Asia have become costs of domestic social protection and systemic order maintenance that the establishment government of hegemon have to cope with.In the face of the exclusive threat of the crisis-driven East Asian integration process against the US's leading power of strength,the interactive strategies of the US government with its rising counterpart has been gradually altered from engagement to competition.In order to deal with the domestic and systemic imbalances of power distribution exposed by the economic recession,the Obama administration proposed"reindustrialization" of its domestic manufacturing to protect both industries and workers affected by global trade;the Obama government started again to lead actively multilateral economic and trade arrangements in East Asia,and to compete with the current rising power,i.e.China,for the dominance of the economic order in East Asia.The rescue measures of the liberal political elites to the economic elites triggered the outbreak of both right-and left-wing populist movements in American society.The"Tea-Party Movement" has been judged a great political success,which has paved the way for US right-wing populism to gradually gain support from conservative voters and to influence mainstream conservative parties afterwards,laying a solid foundation for subsequent political effects of populism.The outbreak and failure of the“Occupy Wall Street" movement has left those blue-collar families deeply disappointed and dissatisfied with the Democratic establishment,forming a key constituency that led to the protectionist turn of populist trade politics.The populist presidential candidate Donald Trump took trade as the core of his campaign platform,establishing widespread connections between trade and other social and cultural changes the US citizens have undergone in the process of globalization.By exploiting the emotional characteristics of populism to mobilize people's overall dissatisfaction with elites in economy and culture,President Trump successfully led the mainstream politics of the US as a populist leader for the first time.After Trump took office,the populist trade politics following the logic of "America First" has been fully implemented in East Asia and even around the world.The Trump administration launched unilateral trade sanctions featuring protectionism and economic nationalism.The US logic of trade policymaking in East Asia has been shifted from multilateral cooperation to bilateral blackmail.In order to comprehensively contain the rise of China and China's proposal of reconstructing the East Asia regional production network by means of upgrading its science and technology manufacturing,the Trump administration has carried out exclusive containment on China through introducing Indo-Pacific strategy in the security aspect and blatantly launched a trade war against China in the economy aspect.The populist trade logic of the United States harms shared interests of China and the US,other East Asia economies,as well as corporates and peoples around the world.The populist approach significantly weakened the US leadership in East Asia economic order and the multilateral global trading system.The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a new round of global economic crisis.By the same time,despite Trump's re-election defeat,domestic populism have not been disempowered in the US trade policymaking with East Asia economies,with the logic of "America First" protectionism remaining as the policy consensus between the Two Parties.Domestically,addressing the looming populist threat from Donald Trump,international trade policymaking of the Biden administration,including that with East Asia economies,continues to focus on the US workers and middle class by implementing an establishment version of "America First" so as to respond to populist appeals.Given its economic woes at home and abroad,the Biden administration had to reconsider strengthening its trade ties with China and other East Asian economies.Systemically,in order to contain the challenge of rising power,President Biden has fully inherited and developed the East Asia strategy framework from the Trump era;the US has returned to the exclusive great-power competitive path of multilateralism in the Obama era.The US have been restoring and developing a new hegemonic system with its allies,namely the so-called "Indo-Pacific economic order",rallied to be exclusive to China,which will be built in an all-round way.To tackle the United States over its comprehensive competition in trade policies,China should positively put forward in a concerted effort to build an Asia-Pacific Community with a Shared Future,and to promote an open,cooperative,innovative and sustainable economic order in East Asia.