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Welcome!My name is Timothy Cichanowicz and I am a political science PhD Candidate at the University of Kansas. In 2026-2027 I will be a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University's Program on US-Japan Relations at the Weatherhead Center. I am an affiliated researcher at the University of Tokyo’s Economic Security Intelligence Lab and a project lead at the Trade War Lab. I primarily research international political economy, foreign policy, economic security, and trade.
My research is supported by grant funding from the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and the Stand Together Trust Foreign Policy Grant. I was also a Department of Education-funded Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow from 2023-2024. |
Research Interests
My dissertation examines why advanced democracies increasingly justify trade restrictions in the name of national security and why they vary significantly in which products are treated as national security risks. What determines whether states restrict free trade: genuine national security concerns or protectionist interests? I argue that both drivers operate simultaneously, but that institutional context determines which prevails. In presidential systems, multiple political access points allow interest groups to broaden the definition of economic security by framing sectoral protection as a national security imperative, while parliamentary systems' stronger bureaucratic gatekeeping produces narrower, more technocratic outcomes. To test this argument, I draw on contemporary US-China and China-Japan relations as well as the historical US-Japan trade war. My evidence includes a novel dataset of congressional bills securitizing trade with China at the 6-digit HS level, original expert interviews with economic security elites in Tokyo, historical trade legislation, and archival work on the US response to Japan's economic rise. Logistic regressions across thousands of observations show that protectionism drives trade securitization in the US context, while my qualitative work in Japan finds the opposite: technocratic ministries routinely reject industry-backed proposals where exit costs are low, consistent with a genuinely security-driven logic.
I also research broader issues pertaining to trade and economic security such as legislative activity in this foreign policymaking space, firm responses to these government initiatives, and the sources of this backlash to free trade by studying public opinion on trade, immigration, and globalization.
Beyond academia, I hope that my research can be useful to both industry and the public. I was recently interviewed by KSHB 41, the Kansas City local NBC affiliate, and talked about my role in the Trade War Lab as well as the substantive impact of our work for everyday Americans.
I also research broader issues pertaining to trade and economic security such as legislative activity in this foreign policymaking space, firm responses to these government initiatives, and the sources of this backlash to free trade by studying public opinion on trade, immigration, and globalization.
Beyond academia, I hope that my research can be useful to both industry and the public. I was recently interviewed by KSHB 41, the Kansas City local NBC affiliate, and talked about my role in the Trade War Lab as well as the substantive impact of our work for everyday Americans.
