The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has just updated its survey of trade polls: Polls on NAFTA and Free Trade (Karlyn Bowman, Adam Foster, Fowler Brown, June 29, 2008). The survey includes data from trade polling questions by a number of polling organizations from the early 1980s to 2008. Where possible, the AEI analysts have pulled together time series for questions asked by different polling institutions.
Hat tip to International Economic Law and Policy: Is Trade Skepticism on the Rise? (June 29), who point out that trade skepticism is nothing new.
Do you think it should be the policy of the United States to restrict foreign imports into this country in order to protect American industry and American jobs, or do you think there should be no restrictions on the sale of foreign products in the United States in order to permit the widest choice and the lowest prices for the American consumer?
NOTE: *Asked of registered voters. +Asked of registered voters who said they planned to watch the Sep. 25, 1988 presidential debate. ^Reinterviews of registered voters who were originally interviewed Sep. 23-25, 1988 and who watched the Sep. 25, 1988 presidential debate. #Asked of registered voters who said they planned to watch the Oct. 13, 1988 presidential debate. %Asked of registered voters who watched the Oct. 13, 1988 presidential debate.
Ben's note - where multiple years are shown, the question was asked at different points in time.
The AEI analysts have also compiled a large number of polls on NAFTA opinions. The questions are framed in different ways and can be characterized as generally favorable, generally unfavorable, and not sure. Here are the results of about 60 polls taken over the period from 1992 to 2008. Note that some years have several observations while other years have none. Opinions have fluctuated:
What about NAFTA in particular? In this Public Opinion study, we look first at opinion about NAFTA before its passage, and then at opinion after passage. We also include a summary trend that lists all the questions we could find about NAFTA chronologically. The wording of these questions differs, but the summary trend is still a useful gauge of opinion.
During the debate on NAFTA, large numbers of Americans said they didn’t have strong feelings about it. When pollsters gave people the option of replying “haven’t heard enough to have an opinion” between one-third and half of those surveyed gave that response. In seven iterations of an NBC News/Wall Street Journal question asked between September 1992 and October 1993, for example, more than 35 percent responded that they had not heard enough about the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico to have an opinion. In four Los Angeles Times polls between September and June 1993, about half said they had not heard enough about the free trade agreement between Mexico and the United States to venture an opinion.
After President Clinton signed the legislation on December 8, 1993, substantial numbers of people have said that they didn’t know enough about NAFTA to say whether it is good or bad for the country. In questions asked by NBC News/Wall Street Journal interviewers in 1997 and in 2003, around 45 percent said they were either not sure of NAFTA’s impact or didn’t think it had had much of an impact In two Zogby International questions from 1997 and 2003, more than a quarter said they were not sure whether NAFTA had created or lost jobs for the U.S. This consistently large bloc of undecided Americans may indicate our limited attention to trade issues. It may also reflect the fact that NAFTA has not directly touched the lives of most Americans at their own jobs or as consumers. It also underscores the deep ambivalence many Americans have about trade. Nationally, in questions asked in the first few years after passage, only small numbers of Americans wanted to scrap NAFTA. Seventeen percent of those surveyed nationally in a 1997 EPIC-MRA poll said we should pull out of the agreement. In March 2003, 12 percent gave that response. At the other end of the spectrum, 30 percent in 1997 and around 20 percent today say it should be continued as is. Opinion bulks in the middle category “continue with changes.” Although the question isn’t asked often, around 15 percent tell the pollsters their job is threatened by foreign competition.
Revised July 2 to clarify information in NAFTA figure.
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