Scott Lincicome and some Cato Institute polling experts have worked with YouGov to put together what I think is the definitive work on Americans' views of trade policy. For me, two of the most important findings are: (1) American voters think of trade as much less important than other policy issues; and (2) they are mildly pro-trade, but their views on trade policy are complex and a bit hard to pin down.
Let's go through a couple of the questions/responses. First up is the importance (or lack thereof) of trade:
Maybe the role of swing states makes trade slightly more important in presidential elections, as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are states where competition with foreign manufacturing matters more than average. But overall, trade is clearly not a top issue for voters.
Nest up is a question about "free trade," which people seem to like:
Of course, there are endless debates on what exactly is meant by "free trade," but it would be difficult to get that much nuance into these questions, and what we have is a clear majority that sees free trade favorably.
Turning to a question about tariffs, even though people are strongly pro-free trade, they are somewhat pro-tariff as well, which is hard to make sense of:
The breakdown by particular demographic category is also interesting on these last two questions. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents were all favorable towards free trade, with Democrats slightly more in favor; and Democrats, Republicans, and Independents were all favorable towards tariffs, with Republicans slightly more in favor.
With actual trade experts involved in crafting the questions, they could get a bit more sophisticated with the questions than is usually the case with polling. Here's an example related to tariffs, where the question offers information on the costs of tariffs and distinguishes between fair/unfair trade:
For those who are in to these issues, it's worth taking a look at the full survey as well as the crosstabs.
