On April 2, 2025, President Donald J. Trump announced the application of sweeping tariffs on almost all countries. The lowest of the new tariffs are set at a rate of 10% on imported goods, while other tariffs like those applied on Saint Pierre and Miquelon are as high as an additional 50%. Hailed as “Liberation Day” by Trump’s administration, the tariffs implemented on April 2nd were justified on the grounds of national security and “reciprocity.” Reciprocity for whom? Supposedly for Americans under Trump’s “America First” platform, although different racial groups interpret these claims of fairness in trade policy differently. In a recent APSR paper, Daniel Lobo and Ryan Brutger presciently analyze how white and Black Americans understand the egalitarianism of various US trade policies. Using a 2017 survey of Americans, Lobo and Brutger consider how white and Black respondents evaluate equal trade agreements between countries or trade agreements where the US makes smaller concessions. They find that white Americans, compared to Black Americans, think it is fairer when international trade agreements favor the US relative to other countries compared to equal trade agreements.
Drawing on critical race theory and racial realism, as well as de Tocqueville’s famous analysis of American culture and society in the 1830s, Lobo and Brutger argue that white and Black Americans perceive fairness differently. They suggest white Americans have an “asymmetric” view of fairness because legal and democratic institutions in the US have worked to protect white Americans from falling behind other groups, both nationally and internationally. Black Americans, on the other hand, have experienced a persistent disadvantage in the American legal architecture and therefore adopt a more “principled” view of fairness. These differing racial attitudes towards fairness can be seen in beliefs about trade too.
Using data from the 2,674 white and Black respondents to their survey, the authors find that white Americans view trade agreements which disadvantage the US relative to other countries as more unfair than Black Americans. This stems from significantly higher evaluations among white Americans for trade policies where the US makes smaller concessions than the other country. Indeed, white Americans not only prefer advantageous trade agreements, but also perceive these favorable trade schemes to be fair. Black Americans, on the other hand, view trade policies which are favorable and unfavorable to the US as equally unfair.
White Americans’ employment of asymmetric fairness considerations in international trade policy extends to individuals of all political leanings. Lobo and Brutger establish that both Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives perceive favorable trade agreements to be fair. While the perceptions of their fairness are lower for Democrats and liberals, fairness evaluations for favorable trade agreements are still significantly higher than unfavorable agreements and lend support to the asymmetric fairness argument. Moreover, white Americans’ desire for an “America First” trade stance when compared to Black Americans can be tied explicitly to how these two racial groups view fairness differently. The authors find that white Americans’ predilection for favorable trade agreements is due in large part to their perception that such policies are fair. Conversely, Black Americans’ inclination for favorable trade agreements cannot be attributed to their perception of fairness.
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Americans think about trade from an economic perspective. Such considerations include whether or not a given trade agreement will expand or contract the US economy and create American jobs. But how Americans determine their support or disagreement with a trade policy depends on other societal features, such as whether such an agreement will be fair for the US and the other country. In a thoughtful analysis of their survey experiment, Lobo and Brutger determine that white Americans think it is unfair if they fall behind other countries, and this leads them to perceive favorable US trade agreements as relatively more fair. Black Americans take a different approach by adopting a more principled view of fairness than an asymmetric one. Black Americans therefore perceived trade policy which is favorable and unfavorable to the US as equally unfair. However, a limitation of the study was the small sample size of Black respondents, with only 8% of the 2,674 survey participants identifying as Black. While most surveys find it challenging to recruit Black respondents, future studies ought to undertake even greater efforts to ensure racial heterogeneity in their survey samples for greater credibility in the results.
As trade wars heat up in a way unseen for over a century, the extent to which racial groups in the US perceive trade policy differently takes on renewed importance. Not only will such differences set the tone for how certain Americans like or dislike Trump’s new trade policies, but they will also create differences in how Americans perceive wins or losses from the tariff wars. Lobo and Brutger argue from the position that race is a social construct, but trade victories and concessions risk becoming a social construct too. ■
