Domestic debates about trade have increased the salience of international economic cooperation among the public, raising the question of whether, and how, domestic support can be rallied in support of international trade agreements. We argue that institutional features of trade agreements provide important cues to domestic audiences that shape support, particularly the membership composition and voting rules for multilateral deals. We use two survey experiments to show that the US public is more supportive of trade when it is negotiated with like-minded countries. We also find that the voting rules shape support for trade agreements, but differently across partisan audiences. Republican voters strongly favor the home country having veto power, whereas Democrats prefer agreements with equal voting rules. These differences are largely driven by perceptions of the agreement’s benefit for the nation and the public’s trust of the negotiators and perceived fairness of the rules.

中文翻译：

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制度设计、信息传递和舆论：为贸易辩护

关于贸易的国内辩论增加了公众对国际经济合作的重要性，提出了能否以及如何争取国内支持以支持国际贸易协定的问题。我们认为，贸易协定的制度特征为影响支持的国内受众提供了重要线索，特别是多边协议的成员构成和投票规则。我们使用两个调查实验表明，当与志同道合的国家进行贸易谈判时，美国公众更支持贸易。我们还发现，投票规则塑造了对贸易协定的支持，但在不同的党派受众中有所不同。共和党选民强烈支持本国拥有否决权，而民主党则更喜欢具有平等投票规则的协议。