Does Trade Liberalization with China Influence U.S. Elections?
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This paper examines the impact of trade liberalization on U.S. Congressional elections.We find that U.S. counties subject to greater competition from China via a change in U.S. trade policy exhibit relative increases in turnout, the share of votes cast for Democrats and the probability that the county is represented by a Democrat.We find that these changes are consistent with Democrats in office during the period examined being more likely than Republicans to support legislation limiting import competition or favoring economic assistance.
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The net impact of the China shock on the Republican vote share in Congressional elections is small, and in some years even negative.
“This occurs despite the fact that the net impact of the China shock on the Republican vote share in Congressional elections is small, and in some years even negative, as is the case in a county-level vote share analysis by Che et al. (2016).”
From Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure (2020) · cites this paper as Che et al. 2016
The Conclusion reports a county-level increase of 1.5 percentage points in the Democratic Congressional vote share with greater exposure to the China trade-policy change. That is consistent with a modest effect unfavorable to Republicans, but the paper does not establish the claimed year-by-year pattern in Republican vote share; it also describes its estimated effect as economically significant. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredChe et al. (2016) documents vote share gains for Democrats in counties with greater exposure to Chinese import competition from 2002 to 2010.
“These results are broadly in line with Che et al. (2016), which documents vote share gains for Democrats in counties with greater exposure to Chinese import competition from 2002 to 2010.”
From Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure (2020) · cites this paper as Che et al. (2016)
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Cites
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Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure
Autor, D., Dorn, D., Hanson, G., & Majlesi, K. (2020) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.20170011 · Cited by 1,063 · see citing works
- Authors
- Che, Y., Lu, Y., Pierce, J., Schott, P., & Tao, Z.
- Affiliations
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- Venue
- National Bureau of Economic Research
- Publisher
- National Bureau of Economic Research
- Published
- 2016-04
- OpenAlex
- W2964431489
- Cited by
- 93
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 3
- Type
- report
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- National Bureau of Economic Research (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › General Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Global trade and economics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Fiscal Policies and Political Economy
- Keywords
- trade liberalization, US-China trade relations, congressional elections, voter turnout, partisanship, import competition, trade policy, economic assistance
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