Popular Support For Trade Agreements And Partner Country Characteristics
consultancy
trade-wars
Economic Inquiry, 2021. With Tom Coupé.
Using quasi-experimental survey data collected immediately before and after the November 2016 US presidential election, we test how the election of Donald Trump affected Europeans’ willingness to sign a trade and investment agreement with the United States. The election outcome produced an immediate, sizeable negative shift in Europeans’ image of the United States, but no corresponding drop in their willingness to sign a trade agreement — popular support for a deal proved more durable than opinion of the partner country itself.
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Using quasi-experimental survey data collected immediately before and after the November 2016 US presidential election, we test how the election of Donald Trump affected Europeans’ willingness to sign a trade and investment agreement with the United States. The election outcome produced an immediate, sizeable negative shift in Europeans’ image of the United States, but no corresponding drop in their willingness to sign a trade agreement — popular support for a deal proved more durable than opinion of the partner country itself.
Public support for a trade agreement depends not just on its expected economic effects but on characteristics of the partner country — including factors with no direct bearing on trade volumes, such as perceived political alignment and cultural distance. We use survey experiments to separate economic from non-economic drivers of trade-agreement support, with direct implications for how governments should sequence and communicate new trade deals.
Published in: Economic Inquiry, 59(1), 549–566