Americans Kind Of Like Trade
A protester holds a "STOP THE TPP" sign outside the New Zealand embassy in New York, where activists protested the TPP deal.
Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
If you knew nothing about American politics and were seeing the 2016 campaign for the first time, you might reasonably assume that American voters really dislike trade deals.
The Republican front-runner, after all, can't stop talking about the dangers of trade with China and all the problems existing trade deals have caused. And on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has constantly lambasted front-runner Hillary Clinton for her past support of trade pacts. Both get big applause when they campaign about the evils of trade deals — and notably, there's no candidate with a similarly energetic stump speech (that gets a similarly raucous reaction) for trade pacts.
And yet. Americans are feeling pretty positive about foreign trade these days. In addition, most mainstream economists think trade is (on balance) a good thing. But criticizing trade deals remains an effective stump topic. Here's what's going on behind the messy politics of trade:
Americans are pretty positive about trade
In the recent primary elections, Republicans and Democrats alike have been skeptical of free trade, at least from the standpoint of job creation. In both Ohio and Michigan — both of which are known for their manufacturing, an industry that many argue has been hit hard by trade deals — Republicans and Democrats had remarkably similar views on trade. A little more than half of people in both parties in both states said trade "takes away jobs." Meanwhile, only around one-third of people across the board said it creates jobs.
But as it turns out, Americans as a whole seem to feel pretty good about foreign trade. Gallup found in February (hat-tip to the Upshot's Justin Wolfers) that 58 percent of Americans see trade as more of an opportunity than a threat.
Interestingly, polls also show that Democrats right now are slightly more in favor of free trade than Republicans. In the early 2000s, Republicans were more likely to see trade as an opportunity than a threat, according to Gallup. But around 2011, Democrats surpassed them. Around 61 percent of Democrats saw trade as an opportunity as of 2015, compared to 51 percent of Republicans.
This bucks conventional wisdom that Republicans are more the party of free trade. (After all, big business interest groups, like the Chamber of Commerce, who support trade pacts, tend to support Republican politicians, while unions — major Democratic supporters — oppose many trade pacts). Indeed, both parties appear to be (moderately) the parties of free trade.
The bottom line, according to one public-opinion expert, is that Americans' views on trade may shift back and forth, but they never really get that extreme.
"Trade is never wildly popular, but sometimes it's less unpopular," said Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow and public opinion analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, DC.
via-npr
