The Trump effect in the Asia-Pacific: Evidence from a 10-country survey experiment

초록

Do foreign publics respond more to who delivers US foreign policy or what the policy contains? Through a survey experiment across 10 Asia-Pacific countries in 2022, we examine how attributing identical policies to Trump, Biden, or Congress shapes foreign public opinion. Respondents evaluated either a confrontational China policy or cooperative Middle East policy randomly attributed to different sources. We find substantial but conditional source cue effects. Trump's association with China policy significantly reduced favorability and expected effectiveness compared to Biden or Congress, with particularly strong negative effects in US allied countries. However, these Trump effects disappeared entirely for Middle East policy, where evaluations remained consistent regardless of source. The findings demonstrate that source cue effects are domain-specific rather than uniform: Trump's hawkish reputation amplified skepticism toward confrontational policies but not cooperative ones. This suggests foreign publics engage in sophisticated processing that considers alignment between leader reputation and policy substance.

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