(iPoster) Consumer Interests, Trade Wars, and Mass Support for Trade Liberalization

• In Event: Poster Session: New Directions in International Political Economy

Abstract

How does the loss of consumer benefits from trade war affect citizens’ attitudes toward trade liberalization? A large literature links “pocketbook” interests to trade preferences, but it overwhelmingly conceptualizes individuals as workers rather than as consumers. Theoretical models of trade politics, however, imply that consumer benefits should drive citizens to support free trade. Empirically, existing work has found only mixed or weak effects of consumer-side information on support for free trade, raising the question of when, and under what conditions, consumer interests become salient in mass politics.

This paper advances the argument that consumer gains from trade are politically powerful only when they are made contrastive and visible. Under conditions of stable prices, the benefits of liberalization are largely invisible; individuals rarely connect everyday low prices to trade policy. By contrast, trade wars and tariff hikes generate observable losses—price increases on familiar goods—which may retrospectively reveal previously unnoticed gains from openness. In other words, it is not the level of prices per se that matters politically, but changes in prices that are explicitly attributed to trade policy.

To test this claim, the paper field an online survey experiment in which respondents are placed in a realistic online-shopping environment and shown price information for a common imported consumer good. The key treatment manipulates whether respondents see (a) only a final price, or (b) a price breakdown that explicitly attributes a higher total price to tariffs imposed during a trade war. Additional framing treatments vary whether the information is presented as a loss versus as a hypothetical gain from liberalization. The design thus isolates the effect of loss of consumer benefits, made salient and attributable to trade policy, on support for trade liberalization.

The study measures downstream effects on support for tariffs, attitudes toward free trade agreements, and beliefs about who ultimately bears the cost of trade restrictions. It also probes mechanisms by asking respondents whether they think about themselves primarily as workers or consumers when evaluating trade policy, and whether they attribute price changes to government policy or to firms.

The project makes three contributions. First, it shifts the focus from workers to consumers in the study of trade opinion, showing that consumer interests can matter when losses are concrete and clearly tied to policy. Second, it leverages the recent trade war context as a naturally plausible narrative to study how policy-induced price increases reshape mass perceptions of globalization. Third, by embedding the experiment in a realistic retail setting, it speaks to the external validity of informational treatments that highlight consumer gains. Together, these findings shed new light on whether visible losses in a trade war can paradoxically generate renewed support for trade liberalization.

Author

• Lu Sun, Tecnologico de Monterrey