Tariffs as Electoral Weapons: The Political Geography of the U.S-China Trade War

• In Event: Geography and the Political Economy of Trade

Abstract

In response to President Trump’s escalation of trade relations, China countered by issuing tariffs on over 6,000 products worth over $60 billion in U.S. exports. We explore two key questions that arise from this response: (1) To what extent did China’s strategy of placing tariffs on specific products reflect an attempt to reduce political support for Republicans? (2) How successful was this strategy in exacting an electoral cost on Republican candidates in the 2018 mid-term elections? We begin by theorizing about the empirical patterns that should be evident if China’s tariff strategy is guided by electoral considerations. We then test these predictions using an original dataset combining detailed data on tariff line items targeted by China, district-level industrial concentration characteristics, and U.S. state-level export composition. We find strong evidence that China’s tariffs correspond to the political geography of the U.S. Specifically, we show that the Chinese systematically targeted U.S. export products concentrated in either swing congressional districts or in strong GOP counties located in closely contested states. Moreover, our analysis indicates that this apparent strategy was successful: areas targeted by Chinese tariffs were more likely to turn against Republican candidates as compared to electoral shifts in similar areas not affected by the tariffs. These shifts cannot be accounted for by mere changes in local conditions, suggesting that voters responded not only to adverse economic change, but also to the GOP’s political backing of the escalating trade war.

Authors

• Sung Eun Kim, Korea University

• Yotam Margalit, Tel Aviv University