North-American Trade Policy Over the Long Run, From the Progressive Era to Neoliberal Globalisation: What Lessons Can we Learn from Historical Parallels?

This article analyses the protectionist orientation of the United States’ trade policy by drawing lessons from the parallel established between two key periods: the recent US policies to address the challenges posed by the end of neoliberal globalization and the one of the American Progressive Era (1890–1920). We show that the latter shares the same underpinning political factor: the political willingness to fight against some identified weaknesses of the domestic economy. The aim is either to protect the economy from the predatory actions of monopolies in the 1890s or to protect the US citizens from job losses in traditional industries in the years 2010–2020. However, the implementation of these protectionist policies is evidence of a hierarchy of economic objectives specific to each period. Resting on the Regulation Theory approach, we put forth that the choice of protection during the Progressive Era is more oriented toward the objective to channel internal capital accumulation and to regulate American capitalism by extension, through state intervention in particular. Recently, it rather displays the objective to “reindustrialize” the domestic economy, in order to preserve the American hegemony in this neoliberal globalization. Overall, the parallel shows that both protectionist policies correspond to a period of transition from one regime of capitalism to another: American capitalism is “between eras”.