{"id":2322,"date":"2016-03-30T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=2322"},"modified":"2016-03-20T15:18:24","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T22:18:24","slug":"public-opinion-on-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2016\/03\/30\/public-opinion-on-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Opinion on Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The way that candidates on the campaign trail bat around the issue<\/a>, one might think that trade is near universally accepted as a bane of the American economy. It is well known that a large majority\u00a0of economists favor trade<\/a>. I was surprised to discover that a slight, but not insignificant, majority of Americans currently\u00a0favor free trade. NPR recently put up an article<\/a> discussing\u00a0data from Gallup that follows\u00a0US\u00a0public opinion on free trade matters over the last few years–what percentage of Americans\u00a0many saw trade as a threat versus as an opportunity. Here is the chart NPR published:<\/p>\n

\"source:<\/a>
A chart from NPR showing public opinion on trade over the last two decades.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The chart suggests that\u00a0public opinions dances around being evenly split, with a slight majority favoring trade in the 1990’s, the first half of the 2000’s, and after 2012. Between approximately 2005 and 2012, a slight majority of Americans saw free trade as a threat. As of February 2016, approximately 58% of Americans describe\u00a0trade as an “opportunity” while 38% describe\u00a0it as a “threat.” Interestingly, both major political parties lean slightly towards favoring free trade. In that same article<\/a>, NPR cites Gallup data showing that, as of 2015,\u00a0approximately 61 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of Republicans\u00a0saw trade as an opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The way that candidates on the campaign trail bat around the issue, one might think that trade is near universally accepted as a bane of the American economy. It is well known that a large majority\u00a0of economists favor trade. I was surprised to discover that a slight, but not insignificant, majority of Americans currently\u00a0favor free trade. NPR recently put up an article discussing\u00a0data from Gallup that follows\u00a0US\u00a0public opinion on free trade matters over the last few years–what percentage of Americans\u00a0many saw trade as a threat versus as an opportunity. Here is the chart NPR published: The chart suggests that\u00a0public opinions Continue reading Public Opinion on Trade<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2325,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322\/revisions\/2325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}