Temporary Payoffs or Trade Policy Priorities? Congressional Support for Trade Adjustment Assistance

Abstract

Trade adjustment assistance (“TAA”) programs provide financial benefits and training to workers who have suffered job loss due to foreign competition. Existing research identifies a host of reasons why legislators of different stripes would be willing to support TAA. However, in practice, TAA implementation often does not reflect a broad consensus and is a highly contentious issue. I argue that we can better identify who supports TAA by focusing on the extent to which a legislator will see immediate payoffs from the policy proposal under consideration. Legislators who represent workers vulnerable to trade competition will support such policies to dampen globalization's adverse consequences. Many legislators who prefer greater trade, however, will often not want to bear the budgetary costs of such programs. For this latter group of legislators, even if TAA might potentially have favorable long-term implications—by reducing opposition to trade liberalization, for example—they will only support adjustment assistance when it is paired with other policies that deliver immediate and tangible benefits. A statistical analysis of several recent Congressional votes, as well as a discussion of legislative wrangling during a number of high-profile TAA implementation episodes, yields results consistent with my hypotheses.