Frames and Issue Linkage: EU Trade Policy in the Geoeconomic Turn

Abstract

Trading actors like the European Union (EU) are increasingly seen as geopoliticising trade policy, but such assertions may not capture the extent to which the Directorate General for Trade (DG Trade) uses this policy to achieve security objectives. This article investigates changes over time in justifications for trade policy by differentiating between how the EU and DG Trade use frames – articulated in four EU trade strategies with two DG Trade strategic plans and 10 annual management plans – to propose solutions in response to the geoeconomic turn. This article finds that, whilst DG Trade's discourse continues to reflect the dominant market liberal frame, geopoliticising pressures are encouraging the emergence of an EU counter-frame linking trade to non-trade issues and a reframing of the counter-frame that increasingly links trade and security policy. As a result, the EU's framing of trade policy resembles deep geopoliticisation, whilst DG Trade's framing resembles reluctant geopoliticisation.