Hegemony and free trade policy: Britain 1846-1914 and U.S.A 1944-1990
Keywords: Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1860
William Ewart Gladstone
United Kingdom
multilateral commercial diplomacy
diplomacy
Carla Hills
free trade
Richard Cobden
USA
Cordell Hull
Brussels Sugar Convention
Super 301
international trade
GATT
foreign economic policy

The thesis examines the relationship between hegemony and trade liberalization, comparing the cases of nineteenth century Britain and the post-World War II United States. How have hegemonic powers that have promoted liberal linternational trading systems responded after the dynamic of trade liberalization begins to break down and their hegemonic position comes under challenge? Why, specifically, did British trade policy between 1870 and 1914 fail to prevent the decline of liberal international trade, and how is the course of American trade policy since 1971 comparable?
A theoretical investigation of hegemony finds that a hegemon possesses a unique arsenal of types of power that its government may use to influence the international economy. Whilst a hegemon, a state can choose commercial policies that further or retard trade liberalization.
The case of Britain is considered, first reviewing Britain's post-Congress of Vienna liberalization of its own tariffs. After repeal of the Com Laws, a hegemonic Britain promoted trade liberalization abroad, first unilaterally, through proselytisation and from 1860 proactively, by negotiating commercial treaties based on mutual tariff reductions and most-favoured-nation treatment. After 1870, however, when British economic dominance was challenged, British governments generally returned to a policy of unilateral trade liberalization. An extensive survey of British commercial policy 1870-1914, followed by four case studies of specific trade negotiations (two sets of multilateral sugar negotiations, Anglo-American talks on a commercial treaty for the West Indies, and Anglo-Japanese commercial treaty negotiations), finds that British trade policy was inconsistent and unsuccessful. Unilateral trade liberalization policy failed to prevent the decline of liberal trade, whereas the few counterexamples of a more negotiated approach achieved much greater success.
After World War n, a hegemonic United States also promoted trade liberalization, but from the outset on a multilateral basis. From the early 1970s, when U.S. economic dominance was challenged, U.S. trade policy was also inconsistent. As in Britain, unilateralism was resurgent. However, American unilateralists have either sought to obtain unrequited trade concessions from other states in negotiations or else to use domestic U.S. legislation to penalize other states not conforming to U.S. trade policy objectives. A briefer survey of the generally well-known U.S. trade policy record since 1971, followed by three specific commercial policy case studies (civil aircraft negotiations in the GATT Tokyo Round, the U.S.-Japan Market-Oriented, Sector-Specific [MOSS] negotiations and the U.S. 'Super 301' cases against India) finds that both countries* trade policies were inconsistent, and that American unilateralism has been generally as flawed a policy as British unilateralism had been.
The thesis concludes that whereas much of the literature on hegemony assumes that hegemonic power and its use are coextensive, the explanation of why hegemons fail to use the power at their disposal requires examination of the policy choices of the hegemon's policymakers, the reasons for those choices and their effect on both the hegemonic state and the international system within which it must operate.