10 - Understanding and Contesting Global Supply Chains in an Era of Inequality

Summary

This chapter explores the rhetorical framing of GSCs in US politics in the context of rising inequality and shifting geopolitics. A growing body of international political economy has focused on the distributional consequences of globalization for demographic groups in the global North and South, and this chapter looks at how political actors’ interpretations of GSCs have framed contemporary debates over trade. The chapter analyzes the debate over trade centered on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement during the 2016 US presidential primary and general election campaigns. When expressing their support for or opposition to the TPP, candidates largely relied on conventional protectionist and liberal framings of trade. With a handful of exceptions, the specificities of GSCs were absent from the political debate surrounding the TPP on the presidential campaign trail, despite the dominance of GSCs in the trade relationships covered by the treaty. Nonetheless, the effect of supply chains on international trade was implicitly reflected in candidates’ identification of the uneven distributional consequences of contemporary trade policies.