Domestic Winners and Losers of Globalization and Racial Attitudes toward Trade

• In Event: Social Identity, Racial Identity, and Political Behavior

Abstract

The extant political economy literature widely accepts that average voters are not well-informed about economic foreign policy issues. Despite the limited knowledge, voters often hold strong opinions on trade matters, and their opinions are shaped by which country they believe gains more from trade (i.e., relative winners and losers among trade partners). In other words, voters’ attitudes toward trade align with sociotropic behaviors, as voters cast their votes based on their subjective assessment of how economic policies have benefited the nation as a whole, even if they have personally “fallen behind”. Conversely, even if their personal financial situation has improved following trade liberalization, voters may assess the financial well-being of the nation less favorably, and thus, hold protectionist sentiments.
Related to this phenomenon, it is plausible that voters also care about the relative well-being of other relevant social groups, yet subnational-level sociotropic sentiments are understudied in political economy. When voters consider the welfare of others while evaluating trade policy options, do they really think about the nation as a whole? Or is their assessment primarily driven by what I call “selective sociotropy” (i.e., subjective evaluation of the well-being of their more salient, subnational in-group)?
The emergent literature on the conditioning effects of racial identities on international trade preferences attributes white Americans’ pursuit of relative gains over their trading partners to a sense of national superiority, social dominance orientation (SDO), expectation of privilege, or disadvantageous inequality aversion. In contrast, these studies also find that Black Americans do not hold similar attitudes toward trade policies — they are driven more by the pursuit of absolute gains from trade, as “one does not exhibit a fear of falling behind if one has been behind from the start”.
My theory builds on these ideas, but I ask, will these dynamics be present even when voters evaluate domestic winners and losers? Given that white American voters similarly face a domestic sense of loss and disempowerment in the age of rapid growth in demographic diversity and the likely future of a white-minority country, white racial identity may become salient when formulating trade preferences. Therefore, whites may perceive a racial-identity-based status threat, and in an attempt to reverse the trend of injury to their dominant status, I expect to observe a similar dynamic in trade preference formations when whites evaluate domestic winners and losers of trade. In short, I argue that white Americans will support international trade most strongly when they believe whites will benefit much more from trade than non-whites domestically.
Whereas I expect white trade preference dynamics when they evaluate domestic winners and losers to mirror the dynamics when they evaluate international winners and losers, I expect a different trade preference dynamic for Black voters when they evaluate domestic winners and losers of trade. While I agree that the historical experience of Black Americans is defined by systems of disenfranchisement and subjugation, and thus, their view of fairness is not defined by the fear of falling behind when considering trade benefits to one’s country versus its trading partners, they may hold a different view of fairness or justice when evaluating domestic winners and losers. Throughout history, Blacks have been excluded from the national imagination in various ways. Given their intergenerational experience of marginalization in their respective societies, when they consider the trade benefits they receive relative to those who historically occupied the position of oppressors and continue to profit from ingrained structural inequalities, they may become increasingly susceptible to disadvantageous inequality aversion. In other words, if the other beneficiary of foreign trade is viewed as the very people whose ancestors established systems of oppression, and thus, are responsible for their group’s lower status on the social hierarchy today, Black voters may no longer pursue absolute gains over relative gains. Whether driven by the desire to seek justice and equality or by the fear of further widening the status gap between white Americans and themselves, Black Americans may also support trade most strongly when they believe they will benefit much more from trade than whites. Therefore, I argue that Black voters will most strongly support trade when it is believed to be asymmetrically beneficial for non-whites compared to whites.
Through survey experiments, this study will shed light on the implications of racialized dominance on voter trade preferences. By examining the effect of public perceptions of racialized domestic winners and losers on trade attitudes, this research will contribute to the growing body of knowledge at the intersection of identity politics and international political economy.

Author

• Spring Mi, UC Berkeley