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Global inequality and the Trump administration

Part of: RIS Trump collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Frederick W. Mayer  and
Nicola Phillips
Frederick W. Mayer
Affiliation:
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Nicola Phillips*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Economy, King’s College London
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Since US President Donald J. Trump took office in January 2017, the future of the global economy has looked distinctly uncertain. This is not because a process of clear and purposeful change can be said to be underway. Instead, it is because of a pattern of piecemeal, inconsistent and contradictory fragments of policy, both domestic and international in orientation, in the arenas of trade, taxation, business relations, finance and banking, social and welfare provision, immigration, and environmental protection, whose cumulative significance remains unclear. The modest task of this essay is therefore to sketch the contours, patterns, inconsistencies and confusions presented by the Trump administration's approach to shaping the US economy and, by extension, the global economic order, and on that basis to offer an interpretation of its emerging implications for inequality both within the United States and across the world.

Keywords

Global Value ChainsGlobal InequalityInternational Political EconomyGlobal Governance
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 502 - 510
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2018 

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References

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2 For a flavour of a voluminous literature, see Henderson, Jeffrey, Dicken, Peter, Hess, Martin, Coe, Neil, and Yeung, Henry Wai-Chung, ‘Global production networks and the analysis of economic development’, Review of International Political Economy, 9:3 (2002), pp. 436–464 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Gereffi, Gary, Humphrey, John, and Sturgeon, Timothy, ‘The governance of global value chains’, Review of International Political Economy, 12:1 (2005), pp. 78–104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Milberg, William and Winkler, Deborah, Outsourcing Economics: Global Value Chains in Capitalist Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Gereffi, Gary, ‘Global value chains in a post-Washington consensus world’, Review of International Political Economy, 21:1 (2014), pp. 9–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Neilson, Jeffrey, Pritchard, Bill, and Yeung, Henry Wai-Chung, ‘Global value chains and global production networks in the changing international political economy: an introduction’, Review of International Political Economy, 21:1 (2014), pp. 1–8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Mayer, Philllips, and Posthuma, ‘Political economy of governance’.

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5 For a tiny selection of recent contributions to the debate on inequality, see Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014); Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Edward N. Wolff, A Century of Wealth in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); Peter Edward and Andy Sumner, ‘Global poverty and inequality: Are the revised estimates open to an alternative interpretation?’, Third World Quarterly, 39:3 (2018), pp. 487–509.

6 Milberg and Winkler, Outsourcing Economics; Frederick W. Mayer and Nicola Phillips, ‘Outsourcing governance: States and the politics of a “global value chain world”’, New Political Economy (4 January 2017), pp. 1–16, available at: doi: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1273341; Nicola Phillips, ‘Power and inequality in the global political economy’, International Affairs (15 February 2017), pp. 1–16, available at: doi: 10.1093/ia/iix019.

7 Milberg and Winkler, Outsourcing Economics, p. 114; Mayer and Phillips, ‘Outsourcing governance’, pp. 141–2.

8 Oxfam, Reward Work, Not Wealth: To End the Inequality Crisis, We Must Build an Economy for Ordinary Working People, Not the Rich and Powerful, Oxfam Briefing Paper (January 2018), available at: {https://d1tn3vj7xz9fdh.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/file_attachments/bp-reward-work-not-wealth-220118-en.pdf} accessed 4 September 2018.

9 Wolff, Century of Wealth.

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12 Mayer and Phillips, ‘Outsourcing governance’; Gary Gereffi and Frederick W. Mayer, ‘Globalization and the demand for governance’, in Gary Gereffi (ed.), The New Offshoring of Jobs and Global Development (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2006), pp. 39–58.

13 Mayer and Phillips, ‘Outsourcing governance’, p. 9.

14 Neilson, Pritchard, and Yeung, ‘Global value chains’, p. 1.

15 See, for example, Dani Rodrik, ‘How to avoid a trade war’, Project Syndicate (10 July 2018); Neil Irwin, ‘The economy can handle steel and aluminium tariffs: the real risk is erratic policy’, New York Times (31 May 2018).

16 Joseph E. Stiglitz, ‘Trump’s trade confusion’, Project Syndicate (5 April 2018).

17 Milberg and Winkler, Outsourcing Economics, pp. 14, 235.

18 Ibid., p. 219.

19 Wai Kit Choi, ‘The Sisyphus’s Rock of prosperity and disparity in the global economy: Giovanni Arrighi and Apple Inc.’s tax avoidance strategies from Obama to Trump’, New Political Science, 40:2 (2018), pp. 285–308.

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21 Natalie Kitroeff, ‘Tax law may send factories and jobs abroad, critics say’, New York Times (8 January 2018); Choi, ‘Sisyphus’s Rock’.

22 Stiglitz, ‘Trump’s trade confusion’.

23 Erica Werner and Damian Paletta, ‘Federal government will be unable to pay all bills sooner than expected, due to new tax law’, Washington Post (31 January 2018); Kristina Peterson, ‘Spending, deficit concerns arise with new tax law’, Wall Street Journal (24 December 2017), cited in Choi, ‘Sisyphus’s Rock’, p. 298.

24 Rodrik, ‘How to avoid’; Stiglitz, ‘Trump’s trade confusion’.

25 See Brookings Institution, ‘Tracking Deregulation in the Trump Era: Interactive Web Tool’, available at: {https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/} accessed 4 September 2018).

26 Stuart Shapiro, ‘Trump’s deregulatory record doesn’t include much actual deregulation’, The Conversation (10 May 2018), citing Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman, ‘In his haste to roll back rules, Scott Pruitt, E.P.A. Chief, risks his agenda’, New York Times (7 April 2018).

27 Shapiro, ‘Trump’s deregulatory record’.

28 Quoted in Erik Sherman, ‘Scaling back Dodd-Frank is just the beginning of Trump’s run on deregulation’, CNBC News (24 May 2018).

29 United Nations, Report of the Special Rapporteur.

30 Paul Demko and Adam Cancryn, ‘Trump’s new health insurance rules expected to hurt Obamacare’, Politico (19 June 2018); ‘Trump pushes low-cost short-term healthcare plans critics call “junk”’, The Guardian

(1 August 2018).

31 For a flavour of a vast literature, see Tim Bartley, ‘Institutional emergence in an era of globalization: the rise of transnational private regulation of labor and environmental standards’, American Journal of Sociology, 113:2 (2007), pp. 297–351; David Vogel, ‘The private regulation of global corporate conduct: Achievements and limitations’, Business and Society, 49:1 (2010), pp. 68–87; Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli, The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); Richard Locke, The Promise and Limits of Private Power: Promoting Labor Standards in a Global Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Mayer and Phillips, ‘Outsourcing governance’.

32 Carla Norloff, ‘Hegemony and inequality: Trump and the liberal playbook’, International Affairs, 94:1 (2018), p. 67.

33 United Nations, Report of the Special Rapporteur, p. 4.

34 Norloff, ‘Hegemony and inequality’.

35 John Ruggie, ‘International regimes, transactions, and change: Embedded liberalism in the postwar economic order’, International Organization, 36:2 (1982), pp. 379–415.

36 United Nations, Report of the Special Rapporteur, p. 7.