The Changing International Leadership of the U.S.: Reflections on Trade Diplomacy and Policy

Leadership by itself is a complex concept and can be understood in multiple different ways. This study aims to answer the question of the understanding of international leadership of the U.S. in the context of their trade policy. To gather a wide enough spectrum of data so that the possible shifts could be detected, the data that is analyzed to answer this question is from 1961 onward until 2019. The data analyzed are the State of the Union Addresses of the United States presidents, from Kennedy to Trump. The method used to analyze the data is the qualitative content analysis. More precisely deductive coding. The coding is done based on the three determined codes – power-base leadership, action-based leadership and follower-based leadership – that represent different conceptions of leadership. The power-based leadership portrays understanding of international leadership whereas power matters, and forceful and coercive actions might be used. The action-based leadership is an understanding of a functional leadership, taking responsibility of others and aims to lead the international community toward the common good. The follower-based leadership on the other hand is an understanding of international leadership where the others define the leader. (Truong-Minh 2017) One of the motivations to include such a recent presidency as Trump is that his understanding of international leadership seems to vary from his predecessors. The assumption when this study was started was that similar understanding of international leadership than Trump’s could be found from one his predecessors. Based on the deductive coding of the State of the Union Addresses, this assumption is proved to be invalid. Furthermore, in the context of the U.S. trade policy, the understanding of international leadership is consistent and has a strong basis on the concept of action-based leadership. From Kennedy to Obama, regardless of the political party in charge and from bipolarity to unipolarity the consistency continues. The significance of this study is that it provides an understanding of the United States leadership in the World from a different perspective than what is used to in the International Relations. The most common aspect to study international leadership is based on foreign policy. In this sense, studying international leadership in the context of trade policy is a fresh as well as fascinating angle. Thus, this study provides a unique and relevant addition on how to study international leadership. Furthermore, it proves that concept of international leadership is much more complex and needs to be studied in different contexts