How do trade wars affect presidential support? President Trump's aggressive tariffs on China despite his largely rural electoral support base provide a unique opportunity to analyze the relationship between international trade policy and domestic support. If trade-related considerations were ever decisive to American voters, the stark decrease in soy prices, a direct effect of Trump-initiated tariffs immediately preceding the 2018 midterm election, serves as a critical test for studying their effect. This letter shows a robust inverse relationship between county-level soybean production and the change in Republican vote share between the 2016 and 2018 congressional elections.This unpublished article is cited as Chyzh,O.V., Urbatsch, R. Bean Counters: The effects of soy tariffs on change in Republican vote share between the 2016 and 2018 election. March 11, 2019. Posted with permission. </p
