Who hates trade agreements? Not US voters
FEW issues in the US campaign cycle seem as toxic as trade: Both major-party presidential candidates oppose President Obama’s 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, and congressional leaders, having refused all year to vote on the trade accord until after the election, say they will not do so even then – potentially killing the largest regional trade pact in history.
So that must mean voters are over whelmingly opposed, right? Wrong.
Polls continue to show that Americans either narrowly favour international trade generally, and the TPP specifically, or are split. Younger voters are especially favourable. But Republicans are not, reflecting the influence of the anti-trade nominee Donald Trump on his traditionally pro-trade party. And certainly trade remains more unpopular in battleground states like Ohio, where it is blamed for years of manufacturing job losses.
Yet the level of support for trade agreements in general, and the pending Pacific pact in particular, stands in notable contrast to the toxicity of trade in an election season largely defined by anger among working-class voters. What matters to many politicians, however, is the fact that the opponents are the ones most motivated to vote based on the issue – just as they are on issues like immigration and gun restrictions that also have more support than divisive debates suggest.
“There really is a lot of ambivalence on the part of the public” toward expanded foreign trade, said Jay Campbell, a senior vice president with the polling firm Hart Research, who is not working for a presidential campaign.
“At a very basic level they know it’s a necessary thing for the United States to trade with other countries – that is clear as a bell throughout all the polling,” Campbell said.
But when asked about trade’s impact on jobs, “people are more inclined to think it’s more of a negative than a positive”.
A survey last month by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that Americans by 50 to 42 percent said trade agreements had been “a good thing” for the United States.
By a narrower 40 to 35 percent, they said the same of the Pacific pact, which would phase out tariffs and set commercial rules between the United States and nations from Canada and Japan to Australia, Vietnam and Chile.
Strategists in both parties say those more supportive of trade are less likely to vote on that issue than are the opponents.
The pollster for the liberal group Public Citizen, among the most active opponents of trade agreements, recently found that the public comes to the debate over TPP from a position “bordering on neutrality”, with Republicans very negative and Democrats more positive. A plurality of all Americans favoured past agreements, it said.
“The public rates past trade agreements more positively than not, though many are unsure and few hold strong opinions,” said a memo on the poll by Democracy Corps, a liberal nonprofit founded by Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville.
As for the TPP specifically, 56 percent of voters were either unfamiliar with it or neutral, the group said.
To build opposition, Democracy Corps recommended opponents link the agreement to the influence over government by corporations.
“I can guarantee you that the intensity and energy on the issue is all on the anti-trade side,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster and founding partner of the firm Public Opinion Strategies.
“It’s a motivating issue, and one that hits home to Americans who are still struggling to make it back from the recession.”
But strategists in both parties say those more supportive of trade are less likely to vote on that issue than opponents.