Browsing by Author "Biggs, Nicolas"

During its first term, the Clinton administration articulated trade agreements and summits as part of a broad political project to reformulate the United States role in international relations and reform the domestic political economy. Trade was an element of foreign and domestic policies the administration attempted to articulate at various points as an inevitability, an imperative for the United States as a global leader, a guarantee for a healthy economy and shared prosperity, and a means of spreading democracy and liberalizing economies. The primary sources for this study are speeches and texts from administration officials, yearly reports from the National Security Council, Council of Economic Advisors, and United States Trade Representative. These texts are analyzed using post-Marxist discourse theory, specifically the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Politics is understood as hegemonic, meaning that it is a struggle to stabilize an indeterminate social space through the articulation of relationships between different elements. This study finds that there were two significant aspects of the administration’s hegemonic trade politics in this period. First, trade was inscribed with progressive elements in that it was said to lead to better environmental and labor standards, contribute to more broadly shared economic prosperity, and push authoritarian or illiberal states towards democratic and economic reforms. Second, political conflict over trade liberalization was articulated as a division between isolationists and internationalists.