ABSTRACT
Similar to the nuclear non-proliferation realm, U.S. leadership has been a key pillar to the international trading order and trade liberalization. In order to be enacted and stabilized internationally (i.e. alter-casting other states into trade liberalizers), U.S. leadership had to overcome domestic diagonal contestation, which consisted of disparate role factions that not only contested the agenda and representation of U.S. trade leadership but also the domestic role relationship between Congress as a regulator of global commerce and the President as a responsible agent. Yet while the establishment of the trade promotion authority reversed these domestic roles, they became again subject to diagonal contestation once the U.S. leadership role changed from being inclusive to rather exclusive internationally in the form of bilateral and trilateral trade agreements. Against the domestic breakup of a bipartisanship consensus, the Bush and Obama administration sought to compartmentalize domestic and international role expectations via the negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – a move that proved unintentionally disappointing due to the prevalent forces of polarization.
