Trade and Immigration: Failures of Opinion Leadership in the Trump Presidency

• In Event: Responses to the Trump Administration

Abstract

Presidential leadership of mass opinion is a well-known and widely documented phenomenon. Nonetheless, it is not an iron-clad law. With respect to foreign policy specifically, the Trump presidency has not only failed to move mass opinion in the direction of his views, it has not even moved Republicans in the direction of his policies. Instead, Americans in both parties have become increasingly supportive of American intervention around the world, even as the Trump administration advocates for an “America first” agenda of limited trade and walled borders.

We use four waves of panel data from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), a nationally representative probability survey administered from 2016 to 2019, to evaluate the ways in which the anti-international rhetoric of the Trump administration has failed to shift public opinion on these issues. We further explore potential explanations for that failure, particularly in terms of the demographic and ideological groups whose opinions on international engagement have changed or remained stable over the last three years. This project will shed light on the effects of the Trump presidency on public opinion and illuminate the surprising ways in which presidential opinion leadership has functioned in recent years.

Authors

• Lizzie Martin, University of Pennsylvania

• Diana C. Mutz, University of Pennsylvania

• Tyler Leigh, University of Pennsylvania

• Alexander Tolkin, University of Pennsylvania