| 摘要 | President Trump campaigned on keeping jobs in the US and putting American workers back to work. He reaffirmed this pledge in his first speech to Congress on Tuesday. A close look at polling data shows that he has tapped into deep and long-standing concerns among many Americans. It’s also clear that he understands the issue’s political implications.
On 16 occasions since 1974, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has asked Americans about foreign policy goals for the United States. “Protecting the jobs of American workers” has always been described as a very important goal. In the past five surveys, conducted between 2010 and 2016, it has ranked at the top, ahead of such goals as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, limiting climate change, and attaining energy independence. In 2016, when the survey was last conducted, it ranked first of 16 different issues.
Trump hammered the issue relentlessly throughout Campaign 2016, and it likely paid-off. About a week before Election Day when CBS News and the New York Times asked registered voters which issue would be most important in casting their votes, the economy and jobs (38 percent) outranked national security and terrorism (28 percent), health care (11 percent), and immigration (7 percent). In the poll, people thought Trump would do a better job than Hillary Clinton handling the issue (51 to 45 percent).
While pocketbook issues like jobs almost always influence voting decisions, they may have been particularly influential this year. Trump’s strong rhetoric about returning jobs to the US and keeping jobs from leaving the country may have provided a critical boost to him in the industrial Midwestern states. State-level exit polls provide some evidence. Half or more of voters in Pennsylvania (53 percent), Michigan (50 percent), and Wisconsin (50 percent) said international trade takes away US jobs as opposed to creating them or not affecting them. In each of these states, the voters who gave this response voted strongly for Trump. In Pennsylvania, these voters chose Trump 64 to 32 percent; in Michigan, 58 to 36 percent; and in Wisconsin, 62 to 33 percent.
The President didn’t let up after Election Day. He pressured Carrier not to move a part of its operation to Mexico, told auto company executives that he wanted to see new plants in the US, and vowed to cut regulations and taxes to make it easier for businesses to operate in the country. He touted the success of this strategy when he told Congress, “Since my election, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, Softbank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart, and many others, have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs.” While many economists and others see this as political gimmickry and bad economics, many Americans do not. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll from January, 53 percent supported punishing companies that move jobs form the US to other countries, while 43 percent were opposed.
Americans continue to place this issue at the top of their to-do lists for elected leaders. A January NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 78 percent of those surveyed said “keeping US jobs from going overseas” should be an “absolute priority” for the Trump administration and Congress this year. Just 16 percent said it could wait until next year, and only 5 percent said this was something Trump and Congress should not pursue. As the top response of 17 issues, keeping jobs in the US far outranked other agenda items, such as cutting taxes for individuals, as an absolute priority.
Thus far, people seem hopeful that Trump can make good on his promises. In January, 61 percent in a CBS News poll said Trump would be able to keep a significant number of US jobs from going overseas; 34 percent said he would not. In a February CBS News poll, 59 percent said they were very (32 percent) or somewhat (27 percent) confident that his policies would create jobs. Ninety-two percent of Republicans felt confident, as did 59 percent of independents, and 30 percent of Democrats, relatively high responses for partisans in our deeply divided country.
Trump is clearly attuned to the politics of these issues, too. In addition to using the bully pulpit to jawbone businesses to keep and create jobs in the US, he also wants to leverage these issues to transform perceptions of the Republican Party. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, he said he wanted to make the GOP the “party of the American worker.”
It is easy to dismiss Trump’s talk about jobs as political flimflam. But at this early stage of his presidency, Trump’s priorities seem to be aligned with many voters’ central concerns. |
