The Absence of Consumer Interests in Trade Policy

Betz, Timm; Pond, Amy

doi:10.1086/701493

Cited by 22 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…We show that domestic policy choices that shape globalization can also disadvantage women in their role as consumers. While trade policy largely ignores consumer interests (Betz and Pond 2019), political inequalities among consumers leave a clear imprint. Complementing existing work on gender differences in trade preferences (Guisinger 2017;Mansfield, Mutz, and Silver 2015), this underscores the need for more gendered analyses of trade policies including examining gender-differentiated import competition, labor market, and revenue effects, as well as variation in (and consequences of) women's groups' participation in trade consultations.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women’s Descriptive Representation and Gendered Import Tax Discrimination

2020

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We identify a form of gender-based governmental discrimination that directly affects billions of women on a daily basis: the setting of import tariffs for gendered goods. These tax rates, which can differ across otherwise identical gender-specific products, often impose direct penalties on women as consumers. Comparing nearly 200,000 paired tariff rates on men’s and women’s apparel products in 167 countries between 1995 and 2015, we find that women suffer a tax penalty that varies systematically across countries. We demonstrate that in democracies, women’s presence in the legislature is associated with decreased import tax penalties on women’s goods. This finding is buttressed by a comparison of democracies and non-democracies and analyses of the implementation of legislative gender quotas. Our work highlights a previously unacknowledged government policy that penalizes women and also provides powerful evidence that descriptive representation can have a substantial, direct impact on discriminatory policies.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women’s Descriptive Representation and Gendered Import Tax Discrimination

2020

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“…It is crucial to study why legislators are unlikely to respond to public opinion in their trade policy-making process. Studies show that American voters have a weak understanding of the economic consequences of trade (Betz & Pond, 2019; Bearce & Moya, 2020). Specifically, Rho and Tomz (2017) show that most American voters fail to predict the economic consequences of protectionist policies accurately.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Does the U.S. Congress Respond to Public Opinion on Trade?

Lee

Pomirchy

Schonfeld

2023

American Politics Research

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Are U.S. legislators responsive to public opinion on trade? Despite the prevalence of preference-based approaches to international trade, not much work has directly assessed the relationship between constituency opinion and positioning by members of Congress on trade bills. We assess dynamic responsiveness (whether shifting constituency opinion on trade yields corresponding changes among legislators) by exploiting an original dataset on the positions of members of Congress on the North American Free Trade Agreement at various points leading up to the November 1993 roll-call vote. We find no evidence of dynamic re-sponsiveness to shifting constituency opinion on even a highly salient piece of trade legislation. We provide qualitative evidence that interest group influence may instead be the predominant source of shifting legislator positioning on trade.

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“…For example, Kleinberg & Fordham (2010: 689) report thatpeople may benefit from imports as consumers, but these benefits might not outweigh their loss of income. Moreover, people more often organize for political action and form their political views in their role as producers, where the costs and benefits of trade policy are concentrated, rather than in their role as consumers, where these costs and benefits are more diffuse.Similarly, Betz & Pond (2019) find that consumer interests do not influence trade policy since heavily consumed goods tend to have higher tariffs than less important consumption goods, particularly in democracies. In survey experiments, Chatruc, Stein & Vlaicu (2021) and Naoi & Kume (2011) also find that consumer interests (where imports are expected to represent a benefit) do not affect support for trade, but that trade attitudes are highly sensitive to potential job losses.…”

Section: Trade War and Micro-foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Micro-foundations of the commercial peace: The effect of net exports on Ukrainian attitudes towards war with Russia

Beesley¹,

Cooper

2022

Journal of Peace Research

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Most studies of the ‘commercial peace’ hypothesis – that trade increases the opportunity costs of war, making it less likely – assume the state has a unified interest with respect to trade. However, it is well-established that trade creates economic winners and losers within a country. Loss of export markets due to conflict imposes significant costs on local economies, but disruption of imports is often less costly, and potentially even beneficial. We posit that opposition to conflict should correlate with subnational variation in the degree to which trade represents benefits or losses for groups and individuals within the polity. Examining public opinion data from Ukraine in 2014–15, early in its long-term conflict with Russia, we disaggregate by province and find that, the greater the importance of regional net exports to Russia, the less likely citizens are to support fighting against Russia and the more they are willing to accept costly compromises to end the conflict. We demonstrate the robustness of these findings using two separate surveys.

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The Absence of Consumer Interests in Trade Policy

Cited by 22 publications

References 34 publications

Women’s Descriptive Representation and Gendered Import Tax Discrimination

Women’s Descriptive Representation and Gendered Import Tax Discrimination

Does the U.S. Congress Respond to Public Opinion on Trade?

Micro-foundations of the commercial peace: The effect of net exports on Ukrainian attitudes towards war with Russia

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