The political economy of trade literature argues that compensating those who lose from trade is an important component of maintaining public support for free trade, a linkage known as the compensation hypothesis or embedded liberalism thesis. Previous research has found support for many elements of the causal chain underlying embedded liberalism; however, there has been little research on the most crucial element of the causal chain, namely that compensation policies lead to increased support for trade. This article provides a direct test of the compensation hypothesis using a survey-based experiment conducted in the United States that exposes half of the respondents to knowledge of compensation programs and then asks for their opinion on trade policy. The article explores whether knowledge of compensation increases support for trade as well as who is influenced by this knowledge and, thus, provides a crucial test of the embedded liberalism thesis.It is widely accepted that trade has significant distributional consequences within a country. While economic theory suggests that free trade is beneficial for a country as a whole, it will hurt individuals who face the risk of job or income loss because of increased imports. Because the costs of trade are concentrated on those individuals who lose income and corporations that lose profit, while the gains of trade-most importantly, lower prices-are dispersed on all consumers, opponents to trade are better able to overcome the collective action problem. As a result, the typical result of the trade policy process has tended to be some level of protectionism, as has been argued by the endogenous tariff literature.So how has the world economy steadily moved closer towards free trade since the end of World War II? One popular explanation is the Embedded Liberalism Thesis, first offered by Ruggie (1982), 2 which suggests that after World War II, policymakers combined movement towards free trade with programs that compensated individuals for the potential losses due to trade. If successful, this compensation can increase support of and decrease opposition to trade, and thus, the embedding of liberal trade policies within a larger welfare state can maintain support for trade despite trade's distributional consequences. The Embedded Liberalism Thesis, therefore, has a clear implication for individual trade policy

Public support for protection is typically attributed to economic self-interest. Beyond pocketbook anxieties, a competing approach, however, contends that sociotropic attitudes dictate foreign policy preferences. Researchers, however, have faced difficulty in disentangling sociotropic attitudes from pocketbook concerns in observational studies. This article addresses this problem by utilizing a priming experiment to examine the relationship between socio and egotropic attitudes. In line with the predictions of the sociotropic framework, individuals are less certain about the egotropic effects of trade and sociotropic attitudes are found to influence egotropic perceptions by reducing uncertainty about the pocketbook effects of trade. In contrast, the study fails to find support for the hypothesis that individuals project egotropic concerns onto societal evaluations. The results of the study suggest that future research should pay careful consideration to the relationship between socio and egotropic attitudes when modeling and analyzing trade-policy preferences.

No abstract

Individual attitudes toward trade are typically analyzed through trade's consequences on labor markets. Few studies directly consider the impact of trade on consumers, who are commonly assumed to benefit from liberalization. Trade protection, however, provides welfare gains for heavy consumers of domestic goods by ensuring the availability of domestically produced products and by dispersing the cost of maintaining inefficient sectors across all members of the economy. Variations in consumer preferences thus impact the perceived personal pocketbook effects of trade. By integrating theory from political economy and consumer psychology, this article provides a framework for understanding consumer interests toward trade liberalization. An analysis of U.S. public opinion lends support to the importance of consumer orientation in individual perceptions of trade. Future work examining the role of self‐interest in trade attitude formation should carefully consider consumer tastes as well as labor markets and sociotropic concerns. Related Articles Anderson, Bret, Brian S. Krueger, and Ping Xu. 2016. “Does Global Market Integration Weaken Opinion‐Policy Congruence in the American States?” Politics & Policy 44 (4): 677‐711. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12167 Gruber, Lloyd. 2013. “Trade, Growth, Poverty, and Politics: Toward a Unified Theory.” Politics & Policy 41 (5): 723‐764. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12034 Jackson, Sarita. 2012. “Building Transnational Networks: Civil Society and the Politics of Trade in the Americas—By Marisa von Bülow.” Politics & Policy 40 (3): 539‐541. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00362.x Related Media US Consumer Product Safety Commission: https://www.cpsc.gov/ Fair Trade USA: https://www.fairtradecertified.org/

Does an internationally unpopular president reduce support for US foreign policy? This article examines how President Trump’s endorsement influences foreign policy preferences abroad. A nationally-representative survey experiment is conducted on Japanese attitudes concerning the government’s response to the recent North Korean missile launches. It is found that leadership credibility has a significant impact on the public. Japanese citizens are less likely to support an aggressive response to North Korea when it is endorsed by President Trump. The effect of leadership credibility, however, may not be entirely distinct from general anti-American sentiments. These results indicate that, even in high politics related to national security, Trump’s lack of credibility abroad hinders allies’ ability to cooperate with the USA by eroding domestic support, but it is difficult to separate the Trump effect from broader attitudes toward the USA.