Intra-Industry Trade

Cooperation and Conflict in the Global Political Economy

Cameron Thies, Timothy M. Peterson

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780804797207
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Exportaciones e importaciones

Intra-Industry Trade calls for us to rethink what trade most often looks like and how it shapes global institutions, fostering peace among states. Cameron G. Thies and Timothy M. Peterson argue that our understanding of trade has not kept pace with its changing nature in the 21st century; existing models, rooted in Ricardo's theories, regard trade uniformly as taking place between entities and countries that offer different commodities and operate according to the logic of comparative advantage. Though this type of exchange does take place, intra-industry trade—international trade of the same or similar commodities, in which foreign and domestic brands compete—is increasingly prevalent. The authors argue that our current academic and policymaking focus on the total volume of trade, rather than its composition, is misplaced. Trade composition matters, not just because it gives us a fuller understanding of how trade works, but also because intra-industry trade increases the likelihood of positive institutional relations and cooperation between states. To illustrate their point, the authors examine the effects that intra-industry trade has on Preferential Trade Agreement formation, its tendency to lessen World Trade Organization disputes and militarized conflict, and its ability to pave the way for new and fortified alliances.

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

Trade Composition and the Global Political Economy

THERE are few who would dispute the claim that international trade and world politics are closely linked, and yet our understanding of this connection has evolved considerably over time. Before the twentieth century, political leaders and philosophers alike viewed trade largely as a lever of power and a complement of armed conflict. History is replete with clashes over valuable markets for trade, as well as with militarized aggression financed by revenues from international commerce. Indeed, the first major conflict subject to academic study—the Peloponnesian War—stemmed from the growing, trade-facilitated strength of Athens, whose powerful navy controlled trade throughout the Aegean Sea, creating an ever-growing threat for adversaries such as Sparta. Later, European commercial empires fought almost continuous wars from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries in an attempt to control valuable—and tradable—resources from around the globe. The relationship between trade and politics—and the role of the state in leveraging trade toward its political ends—from antiquity through the era of mercantilism can perhaps best be summarized by a quotation from Catherine the Great of Russia: “Wherever there is trade there are customhouses also. The object of trade is the exportation and importation of goods for the advantage of the state” (Ekaterina II 1971, 265).

Over the past two centuries, however, scholars have focused increasingly on the cooperative rather than competitive aspects of trade. Emphasizing that the mutual economic benefit of commerce ties together the interests of trade partners (a notion dating back at least as far as Montesquieu),¹ many argue that trade fosters cooperation and discourages political, as well as militarized, conflict. Sir Normal Angell (1913) advocated this view, making the memorable statement—unfortunately timed shortly before World War I—that the high degree of interconnectedness between economies rendered any possible profit from war a “great illusion.”² However, political leaders appeared slow to adopt this scholarly logic, as the two global wars that followed this statement belied the optimistic implications of Angell’s assessment. Although the next several decades saw a resurgence of scholars examining how trade promotes power and influence, potentially leading to coercion and conflict, the end of the Cold War and concurrent expansion of global trade has coincided with a return to a predominant view that trade promotes peace and cooperation.

The resurgence of the peace through trade hypothesis serves as a primary motivation for this book, given that it raises the question, why is trade such a powerful force for peace and cooperation today if it was not so historically? Importantly, there are a number of meaningful differences in the nature of trade that occurs in the contemporary global political economy. First, states are (relatively) more constrained in their influence over trade, given the proliferation of bilateral, plurilateral, and multilateral agreements to liberalize commerce through reductions in barriers to trade. The globalization of production also has changed the nature of trade, a smaller proportion of which today consists of goods produced wholly within a single country. These two major changes have occurred simultaneously with a third trend that is far less studied by political scientists: we now see more variation in the kind of commodities being traded and, specifically, in the similarity of commodities exchanged between trade partners. Whereas, historically, two states would trade commodities that were quite distinct (for example, wheat in exchange for textiles), today we witness trade of similar, often branded commodities (for example, exports of domestically produced passenger cars and imports of foreign brands). This two-way exchange of similar commodities is known as intra-industry trade, qualitatively dissimilar from inter-industry trade of distinct commodities. Although economists have developed theories explaining variation in the commodity composition of trade, there has been little or no examination of how this kind of variation could affect international political relationships. Accordingly, the research question that we address in this book is, how does the similarity of commodities traded between two countries affect the ability of these countries to cooperate, as well as their tendency toward conflict? Our primary argument, developed and tested empirically in the pages that follow, is that a larger proportion of bilateral trade of similar commodities—that is, a larger proportion of bilateral intra-industry trade—is associated with higher levels of cooperation and lower levels of conflict between states.

Inter-Industry Versus Intra-Industry Trade

Our goal in this book is to overturn the predominant views held by scholars of global political economy about the role that trade plays in shaping global institutions and the balance of peace and conflict between states. The importance of trade and war, as well as the relationship between these two processes, is well-known to scholars of systemic leadership (see, for example, Kindleberger 1973; Krasner, 1976; Gilpin 1981; Doran 1991; Findlay and O’Rourke 2007; Lake 2009), those in the interdependence and conflict literature (for example, Barbieri, 1996; Copeland 1996; Keshk, Pollins, and Reuveny 2004; Gartzke 2007), and those studying the formation of institutional arrangements (such as Gowa 1994; Mansfield 1994; Mansfield and Pevehouse 2000). Yet we believe these scholars and most others are laboring under outdated theoretical arguments about trade, as well as limited measures with regard to the kind of trade that matters. We think the time has come to completely rethink the relationship between trade and politics in our global political economy because, while the composition of trade has changed dramatically as we move into the twenty-first century, our thinking remains rooted in nineteenth-century understandings of trade and its political effects.³

Theoretically, most scholars in these varied literatures still rely on extensions of David Ricardo’s classical logic that we now know as comparative advantage (1817), which suggests that there are gains from trade if states specialize in the production of goods they are most efficient at, then exchange them for different goods similarly produced by maximizing efficiency elsewhere. Ricardo provides a simple illustration of his theory using two countries (England and Portugal) and two commodities (textiles and wine). England can produce textiles more efficiently, while Portugal can produce wine more efficiently.⁴ Accordingly, Ricardo argues that English production of wine and Portuguese production of textiles would be (relatively) wasteful. England and Portugal could increase their welfare if England exports textiles to Portugal while Portugal exports wine to England, each state foregoing production of the other good. In other words, Ricardo’s model specifically predicts the emergence of inter-industry trade. The Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) model (for example, Ohlin 1933), which has become the dominant model of inter-industry trade, extends Ricardo’s basic argument to incorporate three factors of production. Findlay and O’Rourke (2007) refer to the period between 1780 and 1914 as the “Great Specialization,” a time during which the industrial revolution in combination with rapid and sharp decreases in transportation costs spurred trade of manufactured goods from Europe and North America in exchange for agricultural commodities and raw resources from the undeveloped global periphery. Indeed, until the twentieth century, essentially all international trade was inter-industry trade, explainable in terms of trading states’ relative endowments of land, labor, and capital.

Although the theory of comparative advantage and the HO model remain relevant and useful today, scholars have noted that an increasing proportion of international trade no longer fits the expectations of these models. Since the end of World War II, there has been an increasing proportion of trade within, rather than between, industries—often among states with very similar factor endowments. Intra-industry trade has expanded considerably in the post–World War II period and now accounts for the majority of total international trade—between 55 and 75 percent, according to Milner (1999, citing Greenaway and Milner 1986, Table 5–3; see also Alt and others 1996). A large body of research in economics has followed from this observation that the composition of trade did not mirror extant theoretical expectations. To explain the two-way exchange of similar commodities, scholars have noted that states might seek to capture gains from scale rather than gains from specialization, as well as gains from the satisfaction of varied consumer tastes. Krugman (1979; 1981) contends that consumer demand for variety in conjunction with the existence of internally increasing returns to scale, both of which are ignored in classical economic models, facilitates intra-industry trade. Accordingly, whereas inter-industry trade consists of relatively homogenous commodities, intra-industry trade is characterized by the exchange of varied products suited to heterogeneous tastes (see, for example, Grubel and Lloyd 1975).

Early economists did not ignore the potential political consequences of trade; however, research in this vein focused on its consequences for lobbying and trade policy. Following from classical models of inter-industry trade, Stolper and Samuelson (1941) extended the Heckscher-Ohlin model to predict how returns to holders of scarce and abundant factors would respond to liberalization of trade. Expanding upon this research, others (such as Rogowski 1987) demonstrate that support or opposition to trade openness can be explained by the factor of production that a given group utilizes. Using similar logic, Viner (1950) predicted that increasing economic integration in Europe following World War II could lead to heightened political resistance by groups harmed by foreign competition.

Yet protectionist backlash to European integration was minimal. Scholars noted that resistance to liberalization in Europe might be lessened because of the intra-industry nature of European trade in the post–World War II period (for example, Balassa 1961). Observing the two-way trade of similar commodities, scholars reasoned that adjustment costs could be lower when trade did not reflect comparative advantage stemming from distinct factor endowments. This follows because intra-industry trade does not lead to the elimination of relatively unproductive industries; although a given industry in a given state could be less productive, the unique variety of commodities produced therein remain marketable for export. Accordingly, given the presence of internal economies of scale, the industry is less likely to mobilize for protectionism when it is exposed to imports of other varieties of the same commodity. As a result, resistance to liberalization should also be lower in the presence of two-way trade.

However, a study by Gilligan (1997) suggests that intra-industry trade could increase lobbying by firms; it is associated with greater ease of overcoming collective action problems because differentiation in commodities suggests that the benefits of lobbying will not be distributed across the entire industry. Kono (2009) extends this work, noting that the nature of domestic political institutions will condition the influence of intra-industry trade on lobbying—whether for or against protectionism. Specifically, when institutions reward narrow interests, lobbying will increase when firms engage in intra-industry trade. Conversely, in the presence of intra-industry trade, lobbying will decrease when political institutions foster wider competition, such as along geographic or party lines. Recent work by Madeira (2013) suggests that intraindustry trade will cause shifts in the nature of political coalitions, reducing incentives to form industry-level associations and increasing firm-level lobbying. While an unproductive industry engaging in intra-industry trade is not likely to exit due to foreign competition, less productive firms within an industry will face pressure to exit. Taken together, these studies suggest that we could see a qualitative shift in the makeup of lobbying entities rather than a mere decrease in overall lobbying.

While political scientists have begun to explore the relationship between intra-industry trade and political competition, work has emphasized preferences toward liberalization, ability to organize for collective action, and trade policy outcomes. Wider, international political determinants and consequences of intra-industry trade have received considerably less consideration. Yet the studies conducted thus far suggest that there could be important links between the structure of trade and international politics. For example, Gowa and Mansfield (2004) argue that alliances should have a greater trade-facilitating impact in the presence of scale economies and similar factor endowments, such that increasing trade is more likely to flow within industries. Our previous work has examined the connection between intra-industry trade and conflict propensity among trade partners, noting that intra-industry trade should be robustly pacifying, while inter-industry trade has more ambiguous effects (Peterson and Thies 2012a). This follows because, at the state level, inter-industry trade can provoke asymmetric dependence more easily than can intra-industry trade. Specifically, inter-industry trade could lead one state to rely on its trade partner for its supply of vital commodities such as fuel, metals, or food. While the trade partner also benefits from such exchange, it could perceive potential to make a demand of the dependent state, using its advantageous position as leverage (see, for example, Hirschman 1945). Conversely, with intra-industry trade, neither state imports commodities that they do not also produce domestically. Furthermore, at the subnational level, a higher proportion of intra-industry trade suggests the presence of fewer interests opposed to trade exposure, who might otherwise lobby for protectionism and who could prefer militarized conflict to protect their bottom line. Finally, there could be consequences for the Kantian mechanism of increased cultural understanding for trade in branded commodities, which could lead to greater consumer awareness and deeper understanding of trade partners.

The Domestic and Interstate Politics of Trade Composition: Moving from the Monadic to the Dyadic Level of Analysis

Many analyses of trade politics build from one of two theoretical approaches to understanding how domestic coalitions form in the abstract as a response to a country opening up to trade.⁵ Alt and others (1996) and Nelson (1988) frame these two approaches on the basis of the importance of factor specificity: the ease with which factors of production (land, labor, and capital) can move from one sector to another in an economy. The two approaches to explaining the demand side of trade policy have used diametrically opposed assumptions about factor specificity. The aforementioned Heckscher-Ohlin model, used by Rogowski (1989), assumes very low factor specificity. For example, workers—that is, owners of labor—could easily move from an industry with lower wages to an industry with higher wages. As a result, because market pressures lead to equalization of wages across industries, this model assumes that returns to each factor are equalized throughout a region’s economy. Producers therefore should export goods that intensively use their abundant factors and import goods that intensively use their scarce factors. This results in owners of abundant factors favoring free trade and owners of scarce factors seeking protectionism. Trade policy coalitions will therefore be organized along factor or class lines. On the other hand, the Ricardo-Viner model assumes that factor specificity is very high (see, for example, Frieden 1991). It assumes that some factors are stuck in their present uses. For example, labor in each industry requires specific skills that do not transfer across industry lines, or factories that are specialized to produce one type of commodity could not easily be altered to produce another. Consequently, this model assumes that factor returns are not equalized throughout a region’s economy, but are industry specific. Trade policy coalitions, therefore, should form along the lines of exporting versus impo...