Trade Rage: Audience Costs and International Trade

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200272199408
Author(s):  
Don Casler ◽  
Richard Clark

Politicians frequently issue public threats to manipulate tariffs but only sometimes follow through. This behavior theoretically ought to generate audience costs. We therefore test the validity of audience costs in trade war settings through a vignette-based survey experiment. The vignettes describe a hypothetical situation involving the U.S. and a second country (China, Canada, or unspecified) with whom the U.S. has a trade deficit. The president (Democrat, Republican, or unspecified) either maintains the status quo, threatens to impose tariffs and backs down, or threatens to impose tariffs and follows through. Our findings highlight differences between security and trade conflict when it comes to audience costs and presidential approval. While Americans sanction the president for issuing a threat to raise tariffs, they generally support backing down. Regression modeling and text analysis of a free response question from our surveys suggest this is because consumers are wary of paying the costs of tariffs.

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Jui-Lung Chen

When US President Donald Trump signed the Section 301 Investigation in March 2018, the Sino-US trade war intensified, exerting a great impact on the global economy. The Trump Administration recently has piled up the economic and trade pressure on China, while China seeks to resort to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and break the siege imposed by the trade war through the "Belt and Road Initiative". US launched a trade war against China due mainly to the huge trade deficit with China, and the trade frictions between the U.S. and China have caused turbulence on the Asian and global industrial chains. Therefore, by analyzing the recent trade conflicts between the U.S. and China and the responses given by both respectively, this paper explores the possible impact on Taiwan's manufacturing and its potential response.


2001 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald A. Dye ◽  
Shyam Sunder

This paper discusses arguments for and against introducing competition into the accounting standard-setting process in the U.S. by allowing individual corporations to issue financial reports prepared in accordance with either FASB or IASB rules. The paper examines several arguments supporting the status quo, including (1) the FASB's experience and world leadership in making accounting rules; (2) the increased risk of a “race to the bottom” under regulatory competition; (3) the inability of most users of financial reports to understand the complex technical issues underlying accounting standards; (4) the possibility that IASB's standards will be diluted to gain international acceptance, allowing additional opportunities for earnings management; (5) the risks of the IASB being deadlocked or captured by interests hostile to business; (6) the costs of experimentation in standard setting; and (7) economies from network externalities. Arguments examined on the other side include how competition will (1) help meet the needs of globalized businesses; (2) increase the likelihood that the accounting standards will be efficient; (3) help protect standard setters from undue pressure from interest groups; (4) allow different standards to develop for different corporate clienteles; (5) allow corporations to send more informative signals by their choice of accounting standards; (6) protect corporations against capture of regulatory body by narrow interests; and (7) not affect network externalities at national or global scales.


2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 80-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kan Yue ◽  
Kevin Honglin Zhang
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642199944
Author(s):  
Quinn Slobodian

This article recounts the backlash against the neoliberal constitutionalism that locked in free trade and capital rights through the multilateral treaty organizations of the 1990s. It argues that we can find important forces in the disruption of the status quo among the elite losers of the 1990s settlement. Undercut by competition from China, the US steel industry, in particular, became a vocal opponent of unconditional free trade and a red thread linking all of Trump’s primary advisers on matters of trade. Steel lobbyists themselves helped frame a critique of actually existing neoliberal globalism, which Trump both adopted and acted on as part of his trade war. By searching for the contemporary attack on neoliberal constitutionalism among the disgruntled corporate elite, we find that our current crisis must be framed as a backlash from above as well as one from below.


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