Can Environmental Clauses in Free Trade Agreements Increase Public Support?

With Stefano Jud. Global Studies Quarterly (Forthcoming)

Abstract

Recent research suggests that incorporating environmental clauses into free trade agreements (FTAs) can increase public support for trade liberalization by signaling environmental commitment and protecting domestic industries. Yet it remains unclear how such clauses perform when competing with the increasingly dominant anti-trade rhetoric that portrays trade as economically harmful or unfair. This study examines how far environmental persuasion can go under these adverse informational conditions. Drawing on two preregistered survey experiments conducted in the United States, we test how different framings of environmental clauses—highlighting global environmental cooperation, the environmental and economic losses of not signing, or the lack of protection for domestic firms—shape public attitudes toward an FTA. Across both studies, anti-trade messages sharply reduced support for the agreement, and no environmental framing fully restored the lost support to the previous level. However, environmental provisions modestly improved attitudes among specific subgroups, such as individuals with stronger cosmopolitan orientations. These findings identify the boundary conditions of environmental persuasion in trade politics: green provisions alone cannot overcome powerful loss-framed economic narratives, but they resonate with constituencies predisposed towards globalism.