US liberals change their minds about free trade – poll

Support for free trade among American liberals has more than doubled since Donald Trump won his second term as US president in November, a study has suggested.

During the election campaign, Trump accused America’s trade partners of ripping off the country and vowed to impose harsh duties on them. On April 2, he made good on his threat, announcing new “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly 90 countries, saying that it would raise revenues and boost the number of jobs in the US.

After global markets reacted by dropping sharply, the president put most of the tariffs on hold for 90 days, reducing them to a baseline rate of 10%. However, the pause does not apply to China, whose exports to the US are now subject to tariffs of up to 145% amid an ongoing tit-for-tat trade war.

A poll by Polarization Research Lab, first published by the Financial Times and actively shared by social media users on Friday, has suggested that “American attitudes towards free trade have rapidly polarized” over the past several months.

In early 2024, there was some 20% support for unrestricted exports and imports among both liberals and conservatives, the study said.

However, the divide on the issue between the groups, which appeared in the run up to the election, has increased dramatically since Trump’s victory, it said.

According to the poll, more than 40% of leftists surveyed now say that they “strongly approve” of free trade.

The Democrats, whom liberals tend to support, had earlier blasted Trump’s tariff policies as being “dangerous” and a “corrupt scheme to enrich administration officials and those loyal to them.”

Meanwhile, the number of conservatives who support free trade has decreased, albeit not as sharply, with some 13% of them still favoring it, the study suggested.

Some of the commentators online said that the results of the poll suggested that the supporters of both Democrats and Republicans tend to simply back the stance of their party on various issues, without actually looking into them.

“Negative partisanship is a helluva drug,” chief data reporter at the Financial Times John Burn-Murdoch wrote on X about the findings of the survey.

The director of Polarization Research Lab, Sean Westwood, disagreed with the notion, arguing that “this is not an irrational flip by Liberals in response to Conservatives – Liberals are witnessing a stock market crash and an economic retraction. It could very well be reasoned.”