Asking people whether they have a positive or negative view of tariffs only tells you so much. In our latest CJ poll, we did ask that question, and found that 49% of likely North Carolina voters opposed the current tariffs and 41% were in favor.
But asking a few more questions, we were able to tease out a much more nuanced picture of how the public feels on a subject with so many moving parts. So, here, in five additional parts, is what we found.
1. North Carolina voters believe, overwhelmingly, that higher tariffs will result in them paying higher prices for the goods they buy.
2. And while a slight majority also think the tariffs will bring in more manufacturing jobs,
3. they are not willing to live with the negative price effects for very long to achieve that goal…
4. and think there are much better ways to get the jobs anyway (like through lowering taxes and regulations, if government should interfere at all).
5. Importantly, they believe (correctly) that there is a worker shortage right now, rather than a job shortage. So the whole question of how to best bring in millions of new jobs may be irrelevant when the jobs that exist aren’t getting filled.
Having all of these data points allows us to see the fairly sophisticated views of the average North Carolina voter. They are also taking in a lot of data, and they are able to weigh multiple things at once.
So while about 41% say they favor the tariffs and 53% say they believe the tariffs would create some additional jobs in manufacturing, it’s important to note that they also believe there will be a negative affect on prices (73%), that they are not willing to live with these higher prices for very long, and that they believe there are better ways to bring in manufacturing jobs (if we even need them).
Another factor that could be interesting to ask voters in the future is whether they see tariffs as legitimate for other reasons, like as a negotiating strategy towards reducing trade barriers or as a national-security move to onshore key industries or as a better mechanism to raise revenue. The Trump administration has seemed to use all of these, plus the manufacturing justification, at times.
As John Hood pointed out in a recent column, the idea that the United States doesn’t manufacture physical products anymore and that we’ve lost a bunch of manufacturing jobs to competitors is at best incomplete. Our national manufacturing productivity has actually increased quite a bit even as there are fewer jobs in manufacturing. The move from manufacturing to service jobs coincides with a massive increase in efficiency in American factories and plants due to automation. And, as many economists note, this is also happening in China — as they see more efficiency using fewer workers.
Tariff impact on NC
When it comes to specific impacts on North Carolina, there are many concerns, like:
- the prices the average person will pay for goods
- the effect of those prices on businesses (like restaurants, shops, and home builders) who source goods from overseas
- the difficulty North Carolina’s current goods-producers might have in maintaining sales in overseas markets that have applied retaliatory tariffs
If there’s one thing in the market that consumers, investors, and businessowners alike hate, it’s unpredictability. And all this unpredictability is likely a big part of why the majority of voters in our poll said the economy is getting worse (53.5%).
With all this in mind, it shouldn’t be a shock that the president’s favorability numbers have slipped some in North Carolina and are now underwater. This matches a decline in his overall national approval rating, which has dipped below other presidents in recent decades, according to Pew Research.
Understandably, many of our conservative readers are not happy to hear that, and some let us know that they’d prefer we not bring up such things. But when Trump’s numbers are good and when he does things we like (which is fairly frequently), like make energy more affordable and abundant, lower taxes and regulations, or reduce the size and scope of the federal government, we report that too.
It’s possible this is just part of a grand strategy to lower trade barriers in other countries through tough negotiations, and that it may end up achieving some laudable goals. But if that’s the case, for North Carolinians and the country at large (as well as his poll numbers), he should probably get to that part sooner rather than later.