The United States and China on the alternative pathways to the multilateral trading system: a constructivist approach to the structural causes of a bifurcated global trade governance

• Grant number: 19/18421-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: January 03, 2020
• End date: January 02, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Yi Shin Tang
• Grantee: Leonardo Diniz Lameiras
• Supervisor: James Matthew Scott
• Host Institution: Instituto de Relações Internacionais (IRI). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: King's College London, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/12125-6 - Washington consensus versus Beijing consensus: the international insertions of the U.S. and China through alternative means to the multilateral trade system, BP.DR

Abstract

The research proposal focuses on the U.S. and China's international insertion through foreign trade policy, and their implication for the current system of global trade governance. In the empirical domain, I am particularly interested in understanding the relationship between the preferential trade agreements - bilateral and regional - signed by both countries over the past 15 years (2001-2016) and the challenges the multilateral trade system faces today. Besides identifying the strategic objectives that informed the trade agendas and the behavioral patterns of the two world's largest trading nations during the aforementioned period, the research also intends to explain why the actors' agency is key to fully grasping the ongoing transformations in the global trade governance. In the theoretical realm, I have lately been trying to develop a pluralistic approach by integrating International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) literature that deal with international regimes, global trade governance and the role of norms in mediating the agency-structure mutual influence over social phenomena. (AU)