Economic Shocks and Political Discourse: US Senators’ Responses and Attitudes to Trade and Globalisation, 2009–2023

This thesis examines how economic exposure, domestic political incentives, and geopolitical considerations shape trade discourse in the United States Senate. Although existing research has analysed the distributive effects of trade and the political consequences of import competition, less attention has been paid to how elected representatives publicly articulate trade-related concerns and how such rhetoric varies across parties, over time, and across international partners. To address this gap, the thesis analyses senators’ speeches in the Congressional Record from 2009 to 2023, focusing on the substantive content and evaluative tone of elite trade discourse.

The thesis combines computational text analysis with quantitative political economy methods. It first uses structural topic modelling to identify the main themes of Senate trade discourse, including trade agreements, manufacturing, national security, energy, and China. It then measures the sentiment of trade-related speeches and examines how state-level import exposure, partisanship, and other political and economic factors shape rhetorical tone. Finally, it tests whether geopolitical alignment conditions the relationship between economic exposure and senators’ sentiment towards major US trade partners.

The findings show that Senate trade discourse is shaped by both material and strategic considerations, strongly mediated by party politics. China occupies a distinctive place in Senate trade rhetoric, where economic concerns are intertwined with narratives of security, competition, and national interest.