Conclusions

The primary purpose of this work is to gain a better understanding of what influences US public opinion on the topic of international trade. To accomplish this goal, we first examined select macro-level trends in the United States during the past four decades. We then focused our attention on a review of responses to questions relating to international trade in numerous public opinion polls. From these initial efforts, we found that, at the macro level, we do not really see any significant relationship between increased international trade and detrimental domestic labor market outcomes. To the contrary, we observe a steady increase in both exports and imports (with imports increasing by proportionally more) that coincides with steady increases in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and average income. Likewise, employment and wages appear unaffected by trade in a general sense. The only aspect of this cursory analysis that may give one pause is that the US manufacturing sector has experienced a decline in employment during the last four decades, wages in the sector have grown, on average, at a slower pace than wages economy-wide, and although manufacturing sector output has doubled, it has not kept pace with GDP growth and, thus, manufacturing output as a share of GDP has declined.