Identity, Electoral Preferences, and Voting in Times of Geopolitical Trade Conflicts

This paper examines how identity shapes trade policy attitudes and electoral behavior during periods of geopolitical trade conflict. Using the Okubo-NIRA panel survey of Japanese workers, we study electoral preference updating around two major shocks: the April 2025 U.S. tariff shock and the November 2025 China-Taiwan shock. We argue that workers might evaluate trade policy not only as individuals or as Japanese but also through their attachment to the firms that employ them and to those firms' interests. This channel is salient for workers in internationally exposed firms - i.e., those that are directly affected by tariffs, supply-chain disruption, and economic-security concerns. Using individual fixed effects and instrumental-variable specifications based on workers' pride in their employer and its interaction with international exposure, we show that firm pride predicts changes in concrete tariff attitudes, which in turn are associated with shifts in party support. Interestingly, our results distinguish general support for free trade as a policy principle from tariff preferences contingent on geopolitical trade conflicts. Our findings suggest that geopolitical trade shocks shape political preferences through the identities of workers tied to their export-exposed employing firms.