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The Impact of Liberation Day on Europeans’ Beliefs about Tariffs and Trade Policy Preferences

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Abstract

This paper analyzes how President Trump’s Liberation Day affected attitudes toward trade policy in the European Union. Comparing the attitude of respondents who were interviewed in the days before Liberation Day to the attitude of those interviewed in the days after, our preferred regression specification suggests that Liberation Day led to a 5.7 percentage points increase (from about 42 percent before Liberation Day) in the share of respondents who totally agreed that customs tariffs harm the global economy. At the same time, we find no statistically significant effects on support for a common EU trade policy, EU retaliatory tariffs, or greater rules-based cooperation. Thus, while a major real-world shock had a modest effect on beliefs about trade policy, it did not significantly shift policy preferences.

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  • Tom Coupé & Oleksandr Shepotylo, 2026. "The Impact of Liberation Day on Europeans’ Beliefs about Tariffs and Trade Policy Preferences," Working Papers in Economics 26/06, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbt:econwp:26/06
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

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