Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023;18(1):1-25.
doi: 10.1007/s11558-022-09464-2. Epub 2022 Jun 11.

Trade Wars and Election Interference

Ryan Brutger  1 , Stephen Chaudoin  2 , Max Kagan  1
Affiliations

Trade Wars and Election Interference

Ryan Brutger et al. Rev Int Organ. 2023.

Abstract

In response to the Trump trade war, China, the EU, and other countries enacted politically-targeted trade retaliation (PTTR) against swing states and Republican strongholds in the United States. We argue that PTTR increases public concerns about foreign election interference and assess the effects of such retaliation across partisan affiliations. We test our predictions using a national survey experiment in the United States fielded before the 2020 election. In contrast to findings about sanctions and foreign endorsements, we find strong evidence that PTTR increases fears of election interference among both Republicans and Democrats. Partisan double standards in reaction to PTTR were strongest for retaliation targeting swing states and smaller for retaliation targeting the President's base. Overall, the evidence shows that economic policies which are not primarily intended to influence elections may nevertheless come to be viewed by the public as foreign election interference.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11558-022-09464-2.

Keywords: Election interference; Intervention; Retaliation; Tariffs; Trade war; public opinion.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest or competing interest statementThe authors are not aware of any conflicts of interest related to this research project. The research conducted here complies with the American Political Science Association’s Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research. The research was approved by the IRB at University of California, Berkeley under protocol 2019-07-12427.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Media coverage specifying PTTR. The figure shows the the proportion of media sources that specifically mention that retaliatory tariffs targeted or specifically affected base or swing states. The base and swing state codings are not mutually exclusive, meaning an article may mention both. The left portion of the figure presents results for US newspapers searchable with Nexis Uni and the right portion presents results for a sub-sample of the largest US newspapers and cable news networks.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Politically targeted trade retaliation perceived as election interference. The figure shows the proportion of respondents in each condition who are somewhat or strongly worried the European Union’s retaliatory tariffs are an attempt to interfere with the upcoming US Presidential election. Lines show 95 percent confidence intervals.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Politically targeted trade retaliation perceived as election interference, by party. The figure shows the proportion of respondents in each condition who are somewhat or strongly worried the European Union’s retaliatory tariffs are an attempt to interfere with the upcoming US Presidential election. Respondents are separated based on whether they self-identified as a Democrat, Republican, or something else (categorized as Independent). Lines show 95 percent confidence intervals.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Partisan interactions on worries about election interference. The figure shows the effect of our treatments on whether a respondent is worried the European Union’s retaliatory tariffs are an attempt to interfere with the upcoming US Presidential election. Respondents are separated based on whether they self-identified as a Democrat, Republican, or something else (categorized as Independent). Lines show 95 percent confidence intervals.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Albertson, B., & Gadarian, S. K. (2015). Anxious politics: Democratic citizenship in a threatening world. Cambridge University Press.
    1. Alexseev MA, Hale HE. Crimea come what may: Do economic sanctions backfire politically? Journal of Peace Research. 2020;57:344–359. doi: 10.1177/0022343319866879. - DOI
    1. Aronow, P. M., Kalla, J., Orr, L., & Ternovski, J. (2020). Evidence of rising rates of inattentiveness on lucid in 2020. SocArXiv
    1. Baum MA, Potter PB. The relationships between mass media, public opinion, and foreign policy: Toward a theoretical synthesis. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2008;11:39–65. doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060406.214132. - DOI
    1. BBC. (2018). US tariffs: Allies retaliate with levies on jam, lamps and sleeping bags. Technical Report BBC.

LinkOut - more resources