Why are industries highly active in some battles over international trade policies, but in other instances, individual firms are highly active and industry groups are subdued? I argue that rising intra-industry trade in the postwar period has undermined traditional trade coalitions and created new opportunities for individual firms to become politically active. Drawing on new trade theories from economics, as well as work on firm heterogeneity and lobbying, I argue that industry associations become less active as intraindustry trade increases due to competing trade preferences among member firms. At the same time, individual firms become more politically active. My results suggest that firms lobby not only for protection, but liberalization. Using data on lobbying expenditures in the USA, my work takes recent analyses of intra-industry trade and lobbying a step further. I show how intra-industry trade redraws domestic political alignments and changes the composition of societal coalitions organized to influence trade policy.

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This dissertation explores the relationship between intra-industry trade and domestic trade politics in developed economies. I develop a theory of the political effects of this fast-growing and undertheorized type of trade, and I advance two key arguments. First, I argue that intra-industry trade undermines the traditional domestic political coalitions over trade that are predicted by classic theories of trade politics. I argue that as broad coalitions become more difficult to maintain, individual firms in industries subject to high levels of intra-industry trade become more politically active, lobbying alone for their preferred trade policies. Second, I argue that intra-industry trade incentivizes lobbying not only by firms seeking protection, but also by exporters seeking liberalization. To develop my theory, I consider the economics of intra-industry trade, relying on the literature in economics known as 'new trade theory.' In Chapter 2, I discuss the economic sources and distributional effects of intra-industry trade, from which I derive my hypotheses about political implications. In Chapter 3, I present my model of the effects of intra-industry trade on preferences, trade coalitions, and lobbying activity over trade. In Chapter 4, I examine the role of intra-industry trade in shaping the structure of trade policy coalitions in the United States. I test my arguments using firm-level lobbying data for US manufacturing industries. In Chapter 5, I link my findings in Chapter 4 to trade policy outcomes. I develop hypotheses about the way that changes in lobbying and trade coalitions are likely to affect resulting levels of protection in OECD economies. I test these hypotheses quantitatively with cross-national data, finding that industries with higher levels of intra-industry trade tend to enjoy more liberal trade. In both of these chapters, I find support for my arguments about the effects of intra-industry trade on trade policy coalitions and firm lobbying activity. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of how international trade affects domestic politics and societal demands for liberalization or protection. i

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