"Public Responses To Foreign Protectionism: Evidence From The US-China Trade War" - By CWP Alum Yeling Tan

America’s recent turn towards protectionism has raised concerns over the future viability of the liberal international trading system. This study examines how and why public attitudes towards 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 support for trade among Chinese citizens. We replicate this finding in parallel experiments on technology cooperation, and provide further external validation with a survey experiment in Argentina. Second, we show that responses to US protectionism reflect both a “direct reciprocity” logic, whereby citizens want to retaliate against the US specifically, as well as a “generalized reciprocity” logic that reduces support for trade on a broader, systemic, basis.

Public responses to foreign protectionism: Evidence from the US-China trade war - David A. Steinberg & Yeling Tan 

 

My research interests lie at the intersection of international and comparative political economy, with an emphasis on China and the developing world. Two broad questions define my research agenda. First: how do the rules of globalization affect politics within authoritarian regimes such as China, given that these rules require increasingly far-reaching modifications to domestic institutions? Second, how do authoritarian regimes affect rule-making at the international level?

I am also a non-resident scholar at the UC San Diego 21st Century China Center and a Public Intellectual Fellow with the National Committee on US-China Relations. From 2017-20, I was a fellow of the World Economic Forum's Council on the Future of International Trade and Investment. From 2017-18, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program at Princeton University

My work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Governance, the China Journal and Global Policy. I am co-author of China Experiments: From Local Innovation to National Reform (Brookings Institution Press) and co-editor of Asia’s Role in Governing Global Health (Routledge). My latest book is Disaggregating China, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order (Cornell University Press Studies in Political Economy Series).

Photo Credit: By The White House from Washington, DC - Signing Ceremony Phase One Trade Deal Between the U.S. & China, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85937183

June 15, 2022
Signing Ceremony Phase One Trade Deal USA China Trade War