How a Retreat from Global Economic Governance May Empower Business Interests.

After decades of broad, bipartisan support for global economic integration, US politics has been shaken by a backlash against global economic governance. The promise of internationally derived gains no longer suffices to smooth over domestic distributional consequences. The Trump administration has turned inward, shunning multilateral governance and raising the following question: If the US and other protectionist governments step back from global economic governance, what will step forward? We contend that weakened global governance is unlikely to cause economic integration itself to unravel. Powerful business interests that benefit from the global economy can use private governance to set their own regulatory agendas using their market power. By stepping away from global governance, states weaken their own bargaining power vis-à-vis powerful domestic groups and curtail the influence of civil society groups. Paradoxically, the Trump administration's step back from global governance would leave power in the hands of firms that predominantly benefit from the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]