Capitalist Class Relations, the State, and New Deal Foreign Trade Policy

Abstract

In this paper, I focus on the political influence of class forces surrounding the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA). The RTAA was instrumental because it shifted much of the trade-policy process from Congress to the Executive Branch. I find that capitalist class relations had a great impact on the development and passage of the RTAA. Despite the concerns of capitalists from the nationalist segment over their ability to influence Executive Branch policy making, the nationalist segment unified with capitalists from the increasingly powerful internationalist segment and were successful in their combined efforts to change the institutional arena within which trade policy was formulated. This research bolsters support for the class embeddedness perspective of trade policy as portrayed in the works of Domhoff (1990), Prechel (1990), and Dreiling (2000). Further, it contributes to this work by explaining the historical foundation for the class embeddedness of contemporary foreign trade policy debate as established by capitalist class relations and changes in state organizational structures during the New Deal.