Trump Effect Research Articles

COVID, elite rhetoric, and Americans’ attitudes toward U.S. trade practices with China

AbstractObjectivesIn this article, we consider how the COVID‐19 pandemic and evaluations of Donald Trump combined to influence Americans' attitudes toward U.S. trade practices with China. We suggest that psychological factors—such as confirmation bias and transfer of grievances—influence how individuals evaluate the costs and benefits of trade. Specifically, we argue that the severity of the pandemic (reflected by both cumulative deaths and news coverage of the pandemic) and the rhetoric of (then) President Trump came together to influence Americans’ attitudes toward trade with China.MethodsTo assess the COVID effect, the Trump effect, and their interaction effect on trade opinion, we merge data from 39 waves of the weekly Nationscape surveys, conducted from October 2019 to July 2020 (N = 62,171), with data on weekly COVID coverage for nine national news sources and cumulative state‐level weekly data on COVID‐related deaths. We estimate our models using hierarchical ordered logit.ResultsOur findings suggest that COVID‐related news coverage, cumulative COVID deaths, and Americans’ favorability toward Donald Trump have strong positive effects on Americans' support for trade tariffs on Chinese imports. Further, we find that the effects of COVID deaths on attitudes toward China tariffs are moderated by Trump favorability, with the effect of COVID deaths significantly stronger among Trump favorables.ConclusionThe COVID pandemic and evaluations of Donald Trump worked both independently and together to shape Americans’ attitudes toward China tariffs.

The Trump effect: the perpetuation of populism in US–China trade

Abstract Our article analyses the enduring influence of Donald Trump's populist narrative on United States–China trade policies under Joe Biden's administration. We extend the literature on the effect of populism and populist leaders by examining what happens after a populist leader leaves office, and to what extent an expectation of populism perpetuates a populist narrative despite a change in leadership. In the case of US–China trade, the Biden administration that followed Trump's has carried on with a populist trade narrative and protectionist policies towards China, despite predictions that the US would return to ‘normal’ economic relations after Trump left office. Through textual analysis of speeches by both administrations, we identify a narrative coherence between Trump's nationalist–populist discourse and the trade rhetoric of the Biden administration, revealing a legacy of narrative expectation that constrains policy choices. Our findings demonstrate how Trump's populist framework persists, shaping White House discourse and policy decisions in the economic realm even after he has left office, and we showcase the enduring effect of populist language in political spheres.

The Trump Effect? Right-Wing Populism and Distrust in Voting by Mail in Canada.

Do Donald Trump's attacks on voting by mail influence how some Canadians view mail-in ballots? The Trump effect on views and behaviors surrounding voting by mail has been well documented in the United States. North of the border, more Canadians than ever voted by mail in the last general election. In this study, we consider how right-wing populism is associated with trust in voting by mail among Canadians. Specifically, we seek to test two main hypotheses. First, we consider whether Canadians holding populist views-and, in particular, those holding right-wing populist views (would-be Trump supporters)-are less trusting of voting by mail. Second, we consider whether political media exposure amplifies this association. We analyze data from both the 2021 Canadian Election Study and Democracy Checkup Survey. We find that those who hold populist views clearly have less trust in voting by mail. This is especially true among right-leaning individuals. Furthermore, as in the United States, this effect is moderated by one's level of political media exposure, with higher levels of political media exposure amplifying the effect of populist views on trust in voting by mail. Our findings, therefore, suggest that the politicization of mail-in voting by President Trump has important implications for the legitimacy of the electoral system not only in the United States, but also in Canada and potentially in other parts of the world.

Schier, S. E., & Eberly, T. E. (Eds.). (2022). The Trump Effect: Disruption and Its Consequences in US Politics and Government. Rowman & Littlefield, 181pp.

This book review aims to help readers examining the merit and demerit of the book edited by Schier and Eberly titled “The Trump Effect: Disruption and Its Consequences in US Politics and Government,” that was published in 2022. Trump’s administration had brought back the behavioural analysis in the International Relations study. The articles presented in the book illustrate how a leader’s agency can turned the course of domestic politics in democratic settings, as well as the global politics. How well the book convince its readers is the focus of our review.

The Trump Effect: Disruption and Its Consequences in U.S. Politics and Government. Edited by Steven E. Schier and Todd E. Eberly. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Press, 2022. 208p. $85.00 cloth, $32.00 paper.

The Trump Effect: Disruption and Its Consequences in U.S. Politics and Government. Edited by Steven E. Schier and Todd E. Eberly. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Press, 2022. 208p. $85.00 cloth, $32.00 paper.

Countering the trump effect in Canada: strengthening support for immigrants using national identity

ABSTRACT Social norms are based on expectations of what others believe and do, and so they can shift in response to what trendsetters—highly visible media or political leaders—say or do. There is evidence that former President Trump as a trendsetter has weakened norms against expressing anti-immigrant attitudes in the US. As such, we ask: can trendsetters affect anti-immigrant norms across national borders? Can such spillovers be mitigated by countervailing norms attached to a national identity? We conduct two survey experiments to determine if there is potential for a Trump spillover effect in Canada and whether it can be mitigated by norms attached to Canadian identity. We find that priming Trump can weaken norms against expressing anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada. We also find that priming Canadian identity can mitigate the Trump as trendsetter effect, and attaching pro-immigrant norms to Canadian identity can strengthen norms against expressing anti-immigrant attitudes. The potential for a political trendsetter to have effects on immigration attitudes across national borders and the potential for national identity norms to mitigate such effects are important to understand given the recent global spread of anti-immigrant sentiment.

Do Scandals Matter?

Political science research is conflicted about the impact of political scandals on survival in office. Scholars have found strong negative impacts to some scandals but others have found minimal or no effects. The literature has explored several consequences but no one work examines them collectively. This article examines presidential, gubernatorial, and Congressional scandals from 1972 to 2021 to assess the impact of scandal in a polarizing America. We find the negative consequences from scandals vary across time and institutions. Scandals in the Watergate era led to more resignations in Congress but fewer resignations of White House officials in the 1990s. During the Trump administration, White House officials did not survive in office at rates greater than past eras, demonstrating little support for the “Trump Effect.” However, politicians generally survived scandal more in the polarized era, hinting at the changing role of political scandals.

Trickle-down racism: Trump's effect on whites’ racist dehumanizing attitudes

Reported hate crimes against Black people surged following Trump's election. While only a relatively small fraction of Americans committed these abhorrent actions, we show that Trump's victory had broader effects on the attitudes of the larger white public. Specifically, Trump altered the extent to which white survey respondents describe Black people in dehumanizing ways. We report findings from a two-wave national survey in which white respondents rated Black people on a dehumanizing attitudes scale before and after the 2016 presidential election. Trump supporters rated Black people as less "evolved” in the post-election wave than they rated Black people in the pre-election wave. Conversely, Trump opponents rated Black people as more "evolved" in the post-election wave than in the pre-election wave. These findings suggest Trump's victory had a polarizing effect on whites' expression of dehumanizing views of Black people, with important implications for scholars' understanding of the sociopolitical factors that can affect dehumanizing attitudes and the normalization of racism in the U.S. today.

Amerikan Yumuşak Gücü ve Üzerindeki Trump Etkisi

This study analyzes the US soft power before and after President Trump took power. It argues that the US soft power had been waning before the Trump administration due to its foreign policy. While the US is still attractive in many cultural and institutional aspects, its foreign policy no longer contributes much to its soft power. In addition, there was a Trump effect on US soft power as such that his unpredictable and contradictory character and ‘America First’ policy damaged the US image. Besides, the raid into US congress hints that post-Trump period might also be problematic in terms of soft power. Yet, this study asserts that he also gave some correct decisions such as withdrawing troops from battlefields. While analyzing the US soft power, this study also questions the conceptualization of soft power and smart power and introduces new arguments. This study aims to propose new ideas about the US soft power and partly the concept of soft power via reviewing the literature.

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration: Was There a Trump Effect?

This paper examines public opinion about immigration policy in 2012 and 2016, seeking to understand whether there are meaningful differences in public opinion across these elections, whether the predictors of opinion changed, and whether the issue’s salience grew. One prominent candidate for explaining differences in opinion about immigration in 2016 is the rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, whose presidential candidacy was launched with an attack on immigration from Mexico. We analyze content from Trump’s campaign speeches and from Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign speeches to compare the emphasis on immigration themes, finding that Trump talked far more about immigration than Romney did. We also examine media coverage and find a marked increase in mentions of the immigration issue, which should, in theory, lead to more people seeing immigration as an important problem. We analyze “most important problem” questions from American National Election Studies surveys and find that mentions of immigration increased from less than one percent in 2012 to about five percent in 2016. However, we find that the overall distribution of public opinion about immigration changed very little from 2012 to 2016. Multivariate models show that the predictors of opinion about immigration policies were primarily the same in 2016 as in 2012: a combination of perceived economic threat, perceived cultural threat, and ethnic prejudice. In addition, models of presidential vote choice find that immigration issues were statistically significant predictors in 2016 but not in 2012. All of this suggests that Trump’s 2016 candidacy did not persuade so much as it activated. Trump’s rhetoric did not significantly alter American public opinion on immigration. Still, his emphasis on the immigration issue did garner increased media coverage and was attractive to many Republican and conservative voters who already held anti-immigration views.

DACAmented Latina Students’ Testimonios About Their Educational Journey Against the Backdrop of Racist Nativist Discourse in Washington State

ABSTRACT During the anti-immigration climate of the Trump administration rooted in racist nativist rhetoric, the feeling of vulnerability became palpable for Undocumented and DACAmented students. Racist nativism, however, is not a new phenomenon; it existed long before the Trump Effect. This study presents the testimonios of seven Undocumented and DACAmented Latinas as they grow up in central and eastern regions of Washington State. These testimonios reflect the lived experiences in the intersections of racism, nativism, and classism. A LatCrit framework with an analysis of racist nativism is used to illustrate the ways racism intersects with other facets of discrimination as these students navigate their high school and college educational trajectories. Using this framework provides a window for understanding how K-16 educators normalized and legitimized racist nativist discourses during the period of 2000 to 2010. This study also highlights the ideological complexities as these discourses intersect racism, nativism, and classism. Finally, this study calls for policies to address racist nativist discourses in the educational system and address Undocumented and DACAmented students’ educational needs, primarily to mitigate the negative impact of the last four years’ extreme political rhetoric on this vulnerable but empowered group.

Political shock and international students: Estimating the “Trump effect”

The negative “Trump Effect” on international students has attracted wide media and scholarly attention. Surprisingly, the best existing evidence remains anecdotal and case-based. In this study, we fill this important gap. We employ a difference-in-differences (DID) design to estimate the Trump effect for the US vis-a-vis various control groups: top 5, top 10, top 20, and all other countries that compete with the US. We find a statistically significant and negative Trump effect that drives international students from the US to competing destinations. Relative to the top five competitors, about 12% fewer students came to the US during the first 3 years of the Trump Presidency. The average treatment effect is statistically significant across the top 5, top 10, and top 20 destination groups but not for the group of all other destinations as a whole. Pairwise DID estimates between the US and 91 individual countries further indicate that the Trump effect is primarily driven by 26 host nations. These findings contribute to our understanding of Trump effects, student flows, and migration.

The United States in Chinese environmental policy narratives: Is there a trump effect?

AbstractDrawing on insights from studies of environmental politics, the policy process, and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), this study examines the Trump administration's influence on how the United States is characterized by Chinese environmental policy scholars. Using an NPF approach and policy narratives on the topic of global environmental governance, our empirical results suggest that the Trump administration has shifted Chinese environmental policy scholars' constructed role of the US but not China's relationship with the US in these narratives. Specifically, there was a widening polarization of the US being portrayed as hero and villain over the sampled time frame (2010–2020) yet the portrayal of the US as an ally remained stable. These portrayals of the US also do not vary across narrators' knowledge and professional backgrounds. Our findings help confirm previous arguments that the Trump Administration's influence on environmental policy and politics in China is more rhetorical than substantive, and indicate that, despite the escalating rivalry between the two countries, Chinese environmental policy scholars continue viewing the US as an ally in global environmental governance. The findings likewise provide insights for rebuilding international climate cooperation and global climate governance leadership.

The 2016 Election and America’s Standing Abroad: Quasi-Experimental Evidence of a Trump Effect

Global favorability toward the United States declined by more than 10 percentage points from 2016 to 2017. This shift coincided with the end of the Obama administration and the inauguration of Donald Trump—but did Trump’s election cause America’s standing abroad to erode? Leveraging a natural experiment, we show that Trump’s victory had an immediate, negative effect on international public opinion toward the United States. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that a major cross-national survey, the AmericasBarometer, was in the field when the 2016 US presidential election occurred. Using data from four Latin American countries, we compare respondents surveyed just before and after the election. We find that Trump’s unexpected win caused a sharp drop in trust in the US government. While scholars have long observed that domestic political considerations shape leaders’ foreign policy decisions, we show that domestic political events—such as elections—can also affect a country’s international image.

Strategic Consequences of Democratic Backsliding: The Trump Effect on Firm Regulatory Risk

We demonstrate that democratic backsliding – the gradual erosion of political institutions in advanced democracies as a result of rising populism – generates regulatory risks for firms. Populist regimes undermine apolitical regulatory norms and practices by selectively targeting their opponents. Using a sample of all publicly traded U.S. firms over the 2009-2019 period, we find that, after the shock election of Donald Trump to the American presidency, firms with more business ties in China – a clear subject of Trump’s populist rhetoric – faced greater regulatory scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This effect was even more pronounced for firms operating in technologically intensive industries, which were also targeted by Trump, and for firms that were politically positioned closer to the Democratic Party.

Black and Abused: The Adverse Impact of Trump-Supporting Supervisors on Black Employees

In the wake of the tragic deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, many organizations issued statements proclaiming #BlackLivesMatter. Nonetheless, management scholars have highlighted the various ways that organizations show that Black employees do not matter and have called for a greater emphasis on Black scholarship. Black scholarship refers to the epistemic practices grounded in the social realities of Black people at work or in society. We seek to extend Black scholarship research by integrating insights from the Trump effect literature. Subsequently, we rely on social cognitive and organizational resentment theories to explain why Trump-supporting supervisors have an anti-Black racial bias and why they model the abusive leadership style of former United States President Donald J. Trump that elicits organizational resentment from Black employees. Across two studies (an experimental-causal-chain study and a field study), we find that perceived Trump-supporting supervisors, in comparison to perceived Trump-opposing supervisors, are more likely to abuse their Black employees. In turn, as Black employees experience abusive supervision, they develop resentment toward their employers. We also find that the impact of abusive supervision on organizational resentment is weaker when Black employees’ organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) is low compared to high. This is because Black employees with low OBSE are more likely to blame themselves for the abuse. Theoretical contributions, practical implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.

Good Names Beget Favors: The Impact of Country Image on Trade Flows and Welfare

This paper estimates the effects of time-varying consumer preference bias on trade flows and welfare. We use a unique data set from the BBC World Service Poll, which surveys (annually during 2005–2017 with some gaps) the populations of a wide array of countries on their views of whether an evaluated country is having a mainly positive or negative influence in the world. We identify the effects on consumer preference parameters due to shifts in these country image perceptions and quantify their general equilibrium effects on bilateral exports and welfare (each time for an evaluated exporting country, holding the exporting country’s own preference parameters constant). We consider five important shifts in country image: the George W. Bush effect, the Donald Trump effect, the Senkaku Islands Dispute effect, the Brexit effect, and the Good-Boy Canadian effect. We find that such changes in bilateral country image perceptions have quantitatively important trade and welfare effects. The negative impact of Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign rhetoric on the U.S.’s country image might have cost the United States 4%–5% of its total exports and welfare gains from trade. In contrast, the consistent improvement of Canada’s country image between 2010 and 2017 has amounted to more than 8% of its total welfare gains from trade. This paper was accepted by Matthew Shum, marketing.

The Trump Effect: How 2016 Campaign Rallies Explain Spikes in Hate

ABSTRACTThe 2016 Trump campaign held more than 300 rallies. Our research examines whether these rallies and Trump’s rhetoric served as opportunities for the spread of hate. We measured the number of reported white-supremacist propaganda, anti-Semitic incidents, and extremist behaviors that occurred both leading up to and directly following these campaign events. We contend that Trump’s rhetoric and rallies increased the perceived threat facing white Americans, heightening their white identity, all while justifying violence and extralegal methods to address their grievances and thereby increasing reported bias incidents. We find that counties that hosted a Trump rally experienced an increase in hate-motivated events. We systematically show that Trump political rallies were associated with a limited size but significant rise in the likelihood of reported hate and bias incidents.

Book Review of Kamalipour, Yahya R. (ed.) (2021). Global Media Perceptions of the United States. The Trump Effect

Book Review of Kamalipour, Yahya R. (ed.) (2021). Global Media Perceptions of the United States. The Trump Effect

Speaking Up: School Climate and Language Politics in the Trump Era

Identity politics are fraught. High school is a prime location where such politics play out and interface with state-dictated norms and values about acceptable social behavior. This article examines identity politics during the Trump era in two far Northern California high schools to better understand the impact on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students. I argue that while the Trump effect allowed hostility towards BIPOC people to be expressed more openly in general, schools can also be sites of resistance to culturecide—the killing of culture—that diminishes the role of minority ontologies and epistemologies in the formation of young people. Yurok and Spanish language courses serve as spaces of heritage language revitalization that challenge White supremacist ideologies embedded in curricula as well as wider US culture.