Framing American Trade Policy: The Analysis of Ideological Representation in Trump's Discourse

Abstract

American Trade policy identified with different ideologies during Trump administration. The trade policy framing has changed with new ideologies toward the international trade system. Previous works have concentrated on Trump's trade strategies impacts across the international trade with no attention to the role of ideologies in framing these strategies. This study explores the framing of American Trade Policy during Trump's era (2017-2020) with the main ideological representation embedding in United States Trade Representative (USTR) official documents. The study has applied eclectic model of analysis (van Dijk's (1998) ideological Square, Wodak and Reisigl (2001-2009) Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) argumentative topoi, and Entman (1993) framing model) for with quantitative corpus analysis of Antconc software. The study reveals that USTR 2020 trade policies are framed, justified, and constructed in aligned with “America First” or “American Savior Archetype” and the ideologies of protectionism, national security, nationalism, authoritarianism and so forth. This study contributes to the economic political discourse studies by showing the role of ideologies in framing the trade discourse, besides the replicability of the theoretical and methodological triangulated model for the future studies.