Threats for workers or opportunities for consumers? The impact of the Great Recession on perceived trade threat in 21 countries

Abstract

Two competing perspectives have been offered to explain how the Great Recession (GR) impacted citizens’ perspectives on international trade. The citizens-as-workers perspective maintains that anti-trade attitudes increase during economic downturns because higher imports of foreign products pose a severe threat to workers’ job security, whereas the citizens-as-consumers perspective suggests that favorable attitudes toward international trade increase as imports provide better opportunities for cheaper consumer goods. In this article, we examine how the dual identities of citizens—as workers and consumers—play a role in shaping how the GR affects perceived trade threat. Using multilevel ordered logit models, we analyze responses from 19,982 respondents nested within 21 countries in the 2013 International Social Survey Program survey. We find that the GR exacerbated perceived trade threat. We also find that the GR intensified pro-trade attitudes in countries with fast-growing unemployment. The results suggest that anti-trade sentiments of citizens-as-workers were dominant after the GR, but pro-trade sentiments of citizens-as-consumers were also present as a countervailing force against a protectionist backlash.