Gendering national identity: a poststructural analysis of the Trump administration and foreign trade policy

Abstract

This paper takes its onset in an ongoing trade war between the United States (U.S.) and China. As current president of the U.S., Donald Trump is considered by many to challenge how U.S. foreign affairs are conducted today. For a better understanding of how global politics is conducted, this paper explores a gendered U.S. national identity through poststructuralism, through which foreign policy and identity are theorized as relying upon each other. Poststructuralism challenges the dominant understanding of International Relations, and in how political and analytical perspectives can be investigated. Moreover, the conceptualization of gender in this paper stems from the works of e.g. Judith Butler and Nira-Yuval-Davis. By using the method of discourse analysis, the goal of this paper is to identify articulations of identity constructions and to illustrate how these have gendered implications, and how this relates to foreign (trade) policy. This paper examines official speeches and documents produced by the Trump administration through a discourse analysis and the methodological framework as formulated by Lene Hansen, with an analytical focus on identity constructions and the dichotomy of Self/Other. The findings suggest that the U.S. national identity as constructed under the Trump administration draws upon gendered underpinnings, which are performative reciprocally relational to foreign policy, as showcased through the U.S. China trade war.