Trump, China, and the Republicans

AbstractThe Republican Party has been the party most supportive of free trade in US politics for half a century. Donald Trump, the 45th US president, held a different stance from his party on free trade. We assess how Trump's China tariffs in mid‐2018 affected the performance of his party in its midterm House elections later that year. We construct a measure of each county's exposure to Trump's China tariffs and merge that with the Republican share of votes in the county. We find that the counties heavily exposed to the tariffs were more supportive of their Republican House candidates.