Policy and Politics: Trade Adjustment Assistance in the Crossfire

The United States introduced Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) as part of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act to dampen the adverse impact of increased trade on workers. Applications to receive TAA require approval from the Department of Labor. Guided by the technical criteria used by the U.S. government in the official TAA certification process, we capitalize on a rich multi-dimensional panel dataset to quantify the effects of political inuence on the TAA certification decision. We find that political factors such as party affiliation of the President, voting outcomes at the state level, and whether a petition was certified in an election year inuence the TAA certification outcome. Those effects remain even when including a wide array of controls and a rich set of fixed effects.