Kenneth Scheve and Mathew Slaughter looked at American ideas about the economic impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) in their paper on Globalization and the Perceptions of American Workers (Peterson Institute, 2001).
All the responses they report came from polls in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Although the results are from different polls conducted over more than 10 years, they treat the results as if they came from a body of persons at a given point in time.
A plurality of the respondents agreed that inward FDI brought in new management ideas and technology, but a plurality also thought that inward FDI reduced the number of jobs, and a majority thought it could give foreigners dangerous levels of "control over our affairs." A majority favored restrictions on inward FDI, and three-quarters of this majority would favor the restrictions even if the FDI created new jobs.
The respondents did not like the idea of "American companies building plants and creating jobs overseas..." About 70% of respondents were "really upset" about this once and a while - although the actual percentage may depend partly on the provocative wording of the question. "This concern seems important enough that regardless of what gains globalization might bring to American companies, a plurality or majority of Americans think that companies moving operations overseas is a predominant feature of globalization." A majority of respondents would do something about it, that is, end "tax breaks for companies that move US jobs overseas...," if they got the chance.
Scheve and Slaughter thought the available questions were a little hard to interpret because they did not distinguish between gross and net investment, and there were no questions about FDI and wages.
I summarized Scheve and Slaughter's report on public opinion about trade issues What Have Americans Thought About Trade? (The Custom-House, March 17, 2008). For other posts on US public opinion on trade and related issues: Public opinion .
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