In October the German Marshall Fund conducted phone interviews with adults in six European countries and in the United States. The Fund was interested in attitudes towards globalization and U.S.-European economic integration.
Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) were used in all countries except in Poland and Slovakia where interviews were conducted face-to-face due to the low phone penetration rate. In all countries a random sample of approximately 1,000 men and women, 18 years of age and older, were interviewed. Interviews were conducted between September 10, 2007, and September 24, 2007.
The survey was wide ranging. The results may be found at the Fund's website.
Amongst other things, the interviewer asked if the respondent were in favor of freer trade. This question was posed relatively early in the interview. I'm interested here in the U.S. responses to this question.
Previous questions has explored whether the respondent was satisfied with the way things were going in the U.S. and with the U.S. economy, and with how they felt about several issues including globalization, international trade, the WTO, and foreign investment in the U.S.
The interviewer asked,
I am now going to ask you about freer trade, that is to say making it easier to buy and sell products internationally by reducing tariffs and other barriers to trade. Which of the following two statements about freer trade comes closest to your view?
The respondent could be in favor, not in favor, or fail to give an answer.
This is a "change" not a level question. The question didn't ask the interviewer to evaluate whether or not trade had been a net benefit in the past or was good currently. The question asks about a policy change from the status quo.
The respondent is only able to give a one-way response - either in favor or freer trade or not. People who think we should stay were we are, or who think we should add to the barriers to trade, both have to give the same, "I am not in favor..." response.
Sixty percent of the respondents said, "I am in favor of freer trade"; 33% said, " I am not in favor of freer trade." Seven percent didn't know or refused to answer. Are people who think we should add to trade barriers more likely to refuse to answer? If so, some of this response should be included in the "I am not in favor..." category.
Interestingly, support for freer trade declined with a move from left to right across the political spectrum:
There wasn't much difference between Republicans and Democrats. Sixty-three percent of Republicans were in favor of freer trade, but 60% of Democrats were also in favor.
Earlier respondents had been asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of international trade. Among those favoring freer trade, 77% had a favorable opinion of international trade. Of those who were not in favor of freer trade, 45% still had a favorable opinion of international trade. Perhaps they liked it as far as it went, but didn't want it to go further.
Men were more likely to be in favor than women. Sixty-eight percent of men were in favor, but only 52% of women.
Younger people were more likely to answer yes:
The self-employed and employees showed the most support for freer trade, manual laborers and full-time students showed the least. Homemakers, those seeking a job, and the retired fell in between,
There was some evidence that people who were older when they finished their studies were more supportive of freer trade.
Type of locality (metropolitan, urban center, or rural) didn't seem to matter much.
Respondents were asked a variety of questions about their opinions on related issues. Not surprisingly, people (a) satisfied with the current state of affairs in the U.S., (b) satisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, (c) with a favorable opinion of globalization, and (d) in favor of deepening E.U.-U.S. relations, tended to be more favorable to freer trade than those who were not.
Respondents were also asked some questions about what they thought the consequences of freer trade would be. These answers were interesting.
- People who agreed that freer trade costs more American jobs than it creates were about evenly split between those who favored freer trade (47%) and those who opposed it (48%).
- Less surprising, those who thought that freer trade lowers prices and increases product choices tended to favor freer trade (68% to 27%).
- Back to the somewhat more surprising, those who thought that freer trade puts the U.S. at a disadvantage due to high labor costs and environmental standards tended to favor freer trade (54% to 41%).
- Those who thought that lowering trade barriers with Africa could address unstable states and poverty tended to favor freer trade (68% to 27%).
Whites tended to be more likely to favor freer trade (61%) than Hispanics (57%) or blacks (47%).
Hi Ben,
Opinion surveys like this produce strange, apparently inconsistent, results across related topics in a domain. The 'inconsistency' that strikes me most strongly is in the domain of trade impacts on domestic employment. Although 60% of Americans are in favor of 'freer trade', almost the same proportion say that trade leads to more job losses than job creation.
What implication can we draw from comparing the answers to these two questions? That a majority of respondents are pretty relaxed about job losses and prefer freer trade *despite* the job losses? I suspect that this is *not* the answer, because the same 60% proportion (in both the US and Europe) identifies outsourcing as a principle cause of job losses in the economy but only 12% attribute job losses to trade. Now you and I might say: well, outsourcing IS a form of trade; an import of services. But it appears that the survey respondents, when given a choice of factors distinguish outsourcing and trade (in some way that is not clear to me).
I think that if we could go behind this response we'd find that the 60% who favored 'freer trade' might be reduced if they recognized that outsourcing takes place through a trade vector.
Peter
Posted by: Peter Gallagher | December 13, 2007 at 05:38 PM