"22-10 Public Responses To Foreign Protectionism" - By CWP Alum Yeling Tan

America’s recent turn toward protectionism has raised concerns about the future viability of the liberal international trading system. This study examines how and why public attitudes toward international trade change when one’s country is targeted by protectionist measures from abroad. To address this question, we fielded three original survey experiments in the country most affected by US protectionism: China. First, we find consistent evidence that US protectionism reduces Chinese citizens’ support for trade. This finding is replicated in parallel experiments on technology cooperation, and further validated outside of the China context with a survey experiment in Argentina. Second, we show that responses to US protectionism reflect both a “direct reciprocity” logic—citizens want to retaliate against the United States specifically—and a “generalized reciprocity” logic that reduces support for trade on a broader, systemic basis.

David Steinberg and Yeling Tan June 2022 - https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/wp22-10.pdf

Yeling Tan, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since May 2022, is assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon.

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