This past September
- 52% of Americans had a favorable view of globalization
- 64% had a favorable opinion of international trade
- 48% had a favorable opinion of the WTO (still beating out those who had an unfavorable opinion, since 15% wouldn't or couldn't answer the question)
- 66% had a favorable opinion of providing development assistance to poor countries
- 69% had a favorable opinion of international trade with poor countries
- 53% had a favorable opinion of foreign countries investing in the U.S.
- 63% had a favorable opinion of deepening trade and investment with Europe
- 60% were in favor of freer trade (lower tariffs and trade barriers with foreign countries (to my surprise, party preference didn't matter much here - 60% of Democrats were in favor of freer trade, and 63% of Republicans; it was also interesting that support for freer trade tended to drop by age class, at least during working years - 71% of 18-24 year olds were in favor, but only 48% of the 58-64 year olds )
- 57% of Americans think freer trade costs more jobs than it creates.
At least that's what the German Marshall Fund found in a phone survey of U.S. residents 18 and up. It conducted similar surveys of six European countries as well. The fund has been doing these surveys for several years and they do note erosion of U.S. support for trade.
The results were just released: 2007 Trade & Poverty Survey Results Now Available. The website has background materials, including a helpful 35 page summary report. The Fund has provided very detailed summaries and and cross tabulations of the survey responses - the report on the U.S. survey runs to hundreds of pages. It also comes in an Excel spreadsheet version. There's a lot to study here, and the stats above are only a very small part of what is available.
I haven't found a very good description of the methodology. With all the effort the Fund put into this project that seems like an odd thing to forget.
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