ABSTRACT
Our focus on the international politics of trade has bracketed an impor-tant question-what determines the specific trade objectives that gov-ernments pursue when bargaining within the WTO, when negotiating regional trade arrangements, or when making unilateral trade-policy decisions? We take up this question in this chapter and the next by examining two approaches to trade politics rooted in domestic politics. This chapter examines a society-centered approach to trade politics. A society-centered approach argues that a government’s trade policy objectives are shaped by politicians’ responses to interest groups’ demands. This approach suggests that the Trump administration’s determination to renegotiate NAFTA and other free-trade agreements is a response to specific demands made by important domestic economic groups of workers and firms. Similarly, a society-centered approach argues that the British decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) reflects the economic interests of workers as voters who have been or fear that they will be displaced as a result of trade between Britain and the other European Union economies. Moreover, most of the domestic opposition to Brexit and to the Trump administration’s re-evaluation of America’s trade deals emerges largely from domestic economic groups that benefit from these trade agreements.
