Survey experiments demonstrate that not pocketbook concerns but rather anxiety and social identity—perhaps especially partisanship—drive individuals’ attitudes toward trade policy. Yet analysts widely believe that firm-level trade politics are solely determined by economic interests, with internationally competitive firms lobbying for free trade and uncompetitive firms demanding tariffs. However, firms are managed by people, who may be swayed by the same non-economic concerns as other individuals. The trade politics literature has thus largely overlooked the effects of the political ideology of firms’ managers, which may moderate the effects of economic interests on firms’ political engagement. This study reports results from a survey experiment on managers of U.S.-based businesses to learn the effects of partisan framing on managers’ political support for tariffs vs. free trade in the context of the Trump Administration’s decision to increase tariffs on most U.S. trade partners in 2025. The findings suggest that managers widely favor free trade but partisan framing conditions their attitudes significantly. These results indicate that political ideology may be an important driver of firm-level political behavior and should receive greater attention in future research.

Paper TBA

Moderator: Cameron Ballard-Rosa