Gallup 2022 poll: International trade “is an opportunity for growth through exports”*
All respondents 61%
Self-declared Democrats 72%
*The alternative, international trade is more “a threat to the economy through foreign imports,” gets 35% support among the general public; Gallup’s writeup does not cite Democratic support for this proposition.
Gallup’s February trade poll asks, for the 22nd time since 1992, whether we are more inclined to see “exports as an opportunity for growth” or “foreign” imports as a “threat to the economy.” Lamentably off on the economics! But faced with this choice, 61% of respondents choose “opportunity” and 35% “threat.” This result is on the “optimistic” side of the poll’s average, which over the full 30 years comes out at 53%-33%. Its partisan filter, meanwhile, finds self-identified Democrats more “pro-trade” than average at 72%; Republicans are for now more pessimistic, with 44% choosing “opportunity” and 52% “threat.” Independents, at 65% “opportunity,” are closer to the Democratic view.
The second very recent trade poll, released last November by the Chicago Council for Global Affairs, asks about two specific trade agreements — the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (previously the more concise TPP), and U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (before its renegotiation, the North American Free Trade Agreement) and whether in general “globalization” and “international trade” are good for the United States. Though the questions are different, the Council’s results are similar to Gallup’s: an overall positive view, with a noticeable partisan divergence. Asked about a hypothetical decision by the U.S. to rejoin the CPTPP, 62% of Council respondents favored the idea while 33% opposed. Among Democrats, the split was a decisive 75% yes and 19% no; Republicans were also positive but less emphatic, at 50%-38%. Likewise, asked whether “international trade” is good for the U.S. economy in general, 86% of Democrats concurred as against 66% of Republicans; and asked whether trade is good for “creating jobs,” 68% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans agreed.
Both results are pretty typical of the last decade’s trade polling, showing a generally positive public view of trade but with Democrats more enthusiastic. A trawl back through earlier Gallup and Chicago Council polls, along with more by Pew Research, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Monmouth and others, finds at least three different demographic axes of divergence, suggesting that the partisan gap has a stronger foundation than simple reactions to a current administration:
1. Youth and Age: Young people generally seem more positive about trade than their elders. As an example, Pew’s 2018 poll found 18-29-year-olds most likely to agree in a general sense that “trade is good” (84%), and also most likely to agree that trade creates jobs, lowers prices, and raises wages.
2. Race and Ethnicity: Monmouth University asked in 2019 (during the Trump administration’s burst of tariffing) whether “tariffs on products imported from our trading partners” would help or harm the U.S. economy. This poll divides the public a little simply, contrasting the views of non-Hispanic whites with those of all other races and ethnicities combined. It found non-Hispanic white Americans tilting against tariffs (28% help the U.S. economy, 41% harm); among Hispanic, Asian Americans, and African Americans, by contrast, the split was a decisive 19% “help” and 57% “harm.”
3. Education: The same Monmouth poll, found differences on tariffs to be modest among the public as a whole, but with less-educated white Americans noticeably less likely than other demographics to see tariffs as harmful to the economy. Among all Americans with college degrees, 23% predicted that tariffs would help the economy while 56% predicted harm; for all those without degrees, the split was a similar though less emphatic 25% “help” and 43% “harm”. Among non-Hispanic white Americans, specifically though, views diverged sharply by education level: respondents with college degrees viewed tariffs as likely to harm the economy by 54%-23%, while respondents without degrees split nearly evenly, at 31% “help” and 35% “harm.”
Gallup on the 2022 view of trade.
Pew’s 2018 survey.
The Chicago Council’s 2021 poll.
Monmouth University’s 2019 poll on tariffs.
And NBC/WSJ, also from 2019.
Time capsule
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has the longest continuous record of trade polling, spanning 42 years from last November’s report to the March 1979 American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy release. Forty-three years ago, the U.S. public’s top international economic concerns were inflation and the declining value of the dollar, and the public at large appears to have been more inclined to keep tariffs while national leaders mostly favored abolishing them. The Chicago Council archive.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week