David J Hayward - International Trade and Regional Economies: The Impacts of European Integration on the United States

The Impacts of European Integration on the United States

David J. Hayward

First published 1995 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1995 by Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hayward, David J.
International trade and regional economies: the impacts of
European integration on the United States / David J. Hayward.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-8805-8
1. European Economic Community countriesCommerceUnited States.
2. United StatesCommerceEuropean Economic Community countries.
3. EuropeEconomic integration. 4. United StatesEconomic
conditions1981- I. Title.
HF3500.5.Z7U64 1994
382'.094073dc20 93-49475
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01200-7 (hbk)

Perhaps the most prevalent feature of the contemporary space economy is the global-local dialectic. This is manifest in the global reach of production systems and in the terms under which local and regional economies are integrated into the global economy. Planners and policy makers at this level are increasingly aware of the international dimension and seek the tools with which to address it.

The project reported here considers this phenomenon. In doing so, it integrates three distinct topics of inquiry: regional economic analysis of the U.S. states; international trade and the impacts of economic integration; and the European Union's 1992 program. Thus, it is an ambitious attempt to explore the interconnectedness of supra-national and regional economies. Furthermore, it is an explicit attempt to chart new territory in the study of regional economies.

This project was undertaken as a doctoral thesis in Geography at the Pennsylvania State University. It is reproduced here in a rewritten form although substantively unchanged.

David J. Hayward

International Trade and Regional Economies

Recent years have witnessed a growing concern among state policymakers and scholars of regional economic development with the external dimensions of regional economies. The increasing globalization of the U.S. economy and its constituent regional economies has caused state governments to "go international" in their industrial development promotion programs. These efforts have caught the attention of researchers concerned with external trade's implications for regional economies, particularly such aspects as the foreign trade component of state economies (Coughlin and Cartwright 1987a, 1987b, Fieleke 1986, Gillespie 1982, and Griffin 1989), states' relative export performance (Erickson and Hayward 1992), or the states' export promotion policies themselves (Archer and Maser 1989). The concern, however, has generally been for the exports side of the trade equation. These are seen as exogenous sources of demand for the states' products and, hence, unambiguous boosts to the states' economies. It is apparent from a review of the literature that exports dominate the regional economic development agenda, and that state-level policies for international trade are almost exclusively export-oriented. Concern for imports on the other hand, is most often exhibited at the federal level or in respect to their impact on particular industrial sectors. Nevertheless, both imports and exports have significant and direct implications for individual states.

The increasing importance of international trade in the United States economy is indicated by the growth in the size of exports as a proportion of gross national product: from 4.2 percent in 1970 to 7.3 A notable feature of the persistent U.S. trade deficitespecially with Japan and other East Asian partnersis the dominance of trade issues in U.S. foreign relations, which is increasingly evident in the post-Cold War era as former East-West tensions subside.

Both academic and commercial concerns for the U.S. external trade imbalance have dwelt on its causes. That foreign trade is an increasingly important factor in the U.S. economy is generally taken as axiomatic, and the primary issue has centered on whether the problem lies with an over-propensity to import (ie, demand) or a comparative inability to export (supply). In the political arena it is often claimed that the U.S. market is "too open", or that its partners-read "Japan"--don't "play fair". Most research, however, tends to suggest that, in fact, the fault lies with the U.S.'s poor export performance. Hanink (1987) concludes that American firms in aggregate have failed to provide products that meet foreign demand patterns. By this assertion, the problem is effectively relocated from the realm of international diplomacy to one of domestic industrial policy, and hence into the domain of the individual states and regions.