US Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has caused controversy this week because of his aggressive stance on America’s economic relations with China. He recently promised, if elected, to declare China a “currency manipulator” and impose tariffs on Chinese goods, prompting fears of a trade war.
But while Romney’s comments have attracted criticism from some on his own side, who argue the US has more to lose than gain from a tariff war with China, GlobeScan’s most recent public attitudes tracking suggests that Romney’s stance on tariffs is consistent with a majority of US public opinion. Since it was initially measured in 2002, American public support for trade barriers as a way of protecting jobs has remained consistently high, rising from 60% in 2002 to 65% in 2011.
However, other findings suggest this is not part of a new mood of economic nationalism. GlobeScan’s data also show that the numbers who think that government should prevent foreign companies from buying national companies has fallen significantly since 2006. Taken together, these findings suggest that in hard economic times, the need to safeguard US jobs is winning out over both free-market doctrine and patriotic sentiment among the US public.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
Support for the free market as the best available economic system has slipped markedly in the UK over the past two years. This mirrors the sharp decline in support for free market economics recorded in the US last year—although it has since recovered a little there—and comes at a time when Occupy protestors have been camped in the City challenging the practices of the financial sector.
Nonetheless, it is still striking that this fall in support is happening when the UK has its first right-of-center government since 1997, which has vigorously defended the role of the City in British economic life and is pressing ahead with an ambitious programme of free-market reforms and cuts to public services.
In contrast, support for the free market economic system has strengthened over the past two years in India, where the economy has rebounded robustly following the global financial crisis.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
While problems such as the ongoing crisis in the Eurozone, climate change, and unrest in the Middle East preoccupy governments around the world as 2012 begins, GlobeScan’s regular monitoring of global concern over a range of issues highlights that it is more immediate and everyday problems that are often at the forefront of citizens’ minds.
In GlobeScan’s annual tracking research, corruption once again emerges as one of the global problems considered to be most serious. It is also the problem that citizens are most likely to cite when asked which global problems they have discussed with their friends and family over the past month.
As this map shows, corruption tops the list of “most talked about” problems in a range of developing and emerging economies, including Peru in South America, Ghana and Egypt in Africa, Turkey in Europe, and India and Indonesia in Asia. Corruption is also often cited as a barrier to getting to grips with many of the other global problems that, as GlobeScan’s tracking shows, preoccupy many global citizens.
Taking a strong and public stand against corruption will be an important element in what businesses need to do to demonstrate their relevance to citizens’ lives, help build public trust, and maintain their social licence to operate.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
GlobeScan’s tracking survey reveals that public concern about climate change has been volatile since the 2009 Copenhagen summit’s failure to agree to a global deal to reduce carbon emissions—but concern continues to be higher in developing than in developed countries.
This reflects our 2010 Greendex survey of 17 countries, where British, Swedish, German, and American respondents showed the lowest levels of agreement with the proposition “global warming will worsen my way of life within my own lifetime,” while Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese respondents showed high levels of agreement. This may reflect the greater potential for catastrophic events such as natural disasters to impact people’s lives in developing nations.
This decline in concern about climate change may result from increasing feelings of urgency about other social and economic issues overshadowing long-term concerns about the environment. In 2011, corruption, extreme poverty, the rising cost of food and energy, and terrorism emerge as greater preoccupations on a global level than climate change.
Particular factors that are likely to be behind the decline in the perceived seriousness of climate change in developed countries between 2000 and 2003—and again in 2010—are the impact of the September 11 attacks, the subsequent conflicts in the Middle East, and the global economic downturn. The widely publicized “Climategate” controversy is also likely to have been a factor.
France, Japan, and the USA have seen continuing decreases in the perceived seriousness of climate change over the past three years. Under the influence of the ongoing economic slowdown—and of the Fukushima disaster—climate change has lost attention in some major economies, and is slow to regain it.
Over the past year, however, climate change has recovered its position as an issue of serious concern in some developed and developing countries, particularly in Ecuador, Peru, Turkey, and Russia.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
In contrast to the banking industry’s declining reputation in the UK and US, where public anger against the finance industry has been seen in drawn-out public protests, GlobeScan tracking reveals that respect for the sector’s reputation remains relatively solid in China and India.
The data shows that while Britons’ and Americans’ respect for banks and financial companies is falling, the industry’s reputation has not suffered the same fate in China and India. In fact, Indians have become increasingly likely to say they respect the banking sector—almost half (49%) now say they do, compared to 39 percent in 2008. Public esteem also remains strong in China despite a slight decrease in the past year.
Banks, and the economy in general, have fared relatively well in India and China—counteracting the negative trend seen elsewhere. New investments by Indian banks such as installing ATMs and establishing new offices throughout the country have created jobs and better services and improved the sector’s reputation.
Higher levels of respect for banks and financial companies in China and India also reflect relatively positive views there of the sector’s social performance. When asked how well they fulfill their responsibilities to society compared to other types of companies, Chinese and, in particular, Indian respondents rate the industry more positively; 58 percent of Indians and 33 percent of Chinese rate banks and finance companies “among the very best” or “above average,” compared to 14 percent, each, of Americans and Britons.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
During the last few troubled years, the Brazilian economy has been one of the global economy’s major success stories. Against the expectations of many, the election of former left-winger Luis Inácio Lula da Silva as president in 2002 and the emergence of the other resource-hungry BRIC nations heralded a period of rapid economic growth for Brazil, boom times for Brazilian multinationals like mining company Vale, and the emergence of a dynamic domestic market, helped by enlightened social policies and initiatives designed to boost consumption.
At the same time, public opinion on economic matters has undergone a dramatic transformation. As recently as 2005, GlobeScan’s Trust index for the corporate world—the propensity of Brazilians to say they trust global companies to act in the best interest of society—was heavily negative (-30). But by 2010 the fruits of economic success were apparent to everyone, and trust in global companies had grown out of all recognition to stand at +43. Compare this to China and the USA, where trust in global companies is on the decline.
With new prosperity has come new faith in the ability of the free market model to deliver prosperity for Brazilians themselves. Brazil—along with China—has now overtaken the USA in its enthusiasm for free market capitalism as the best available economic system. When it comes to global economic leadership, this shift more than anything is surely the sign of the changing of the guard in the global economy.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2010
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
More than a year after Kraft Foods’ takeover of UK confectionery company Cadbury, it still appears that the American food giant is having trouble digesting its new acquisition.
After an exodus of Cadbury executives following the merger, Kraft was criticised earlier this year for attempting to persuade Cadbury workers to leave its deficit-hit final salary pension scheme, and with the recent announcement of the demerger of Kraft’s US grocery and snack businesses, Cadbury now faces the prospect of a third major change in its ownership structure in less than five years. These developments will have done little to allay the worries of those who feared that Cadbury would find it hard to preserve its own culture as a small part of a large global group.
But despite this latest example of the problems that often beset foreign takeovers of ‘national champion’ companies, GlobeScan’s data suggest that public sentiment is gradually coming to terms with them. Across our tracking countries, those who disagree that government should prevent foreign companies from buying important national ones has increased from 28% in 2006 to 36% in 2010, the year of the Cadbury takeover.
In straitened economic times, it may be that the public’s head is starting to win over its heart on this issue, and that people are coming to attach more value to the potential for expansion and increased profitability that foreign ownership can bring than an emotional attachment to a familiar national brand. But caution is needed. Protectionists are still firmly in the majority, and while opposition to foreign takeovers decreased in the USA over this period, it increased sharply in China, and also began to climb back up in the UK in 2010–likely in response to the Kraft/Cadbury episode. Companies eyeing potential foreign acquisitions would be well advised to continue to tread carefully.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2010
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
Much of GlobeScan’s recent global public opinion tracking points to the surge of economic confidence and optimism in Asia, even in the wake of global recession. Last year’s Consumer Sentiment Index revealed that Asian consumers were among the most upbeat, and results from our most recent 24-nation survey for BBC World Service on entrepreneurship ranks several Asian countries among the world’s most entrepreneur-friendly.
We asked people to say how hard they felt it was for people like them to start a business in their country, whether their country values creativity and innovation, whether it values entrepreneurs and whether people with good ideas can usually put them into practice. Indonesia and India emerged as among the top five countries in terms of their climate for entrepreneurs, joined by the USA, Canada and Australia. Colombia, Egypt, Turkey, Italy and Russia were the least entrepreneur-friendly. The biggest Asian giant of all, China, ranked alongside the USA as the country where innovation and creativity was felt to be most valued.
But many barriers to entrepreneurship remain—in 23 out of 24 countries, majorities said that they felt it was hard for people like them to start a business. It seems likely that if the feeble global economic recovery is to be maintained, some of those barriers will need to be removed.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2010
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford (Read Bio)
This finding is being featured in The Economist
American public support for the free market economy has dropped sharply in the past year, and is now lower than in China and Brazil, and equal to that in India. The GlobeScan Radar 2010 findings show that there has been a sharp fall in the number of Americans who think that the free market economy is the best economic system for the future. In 2002, four in five Americans (80%) saw the free market as the best economic system for the future—the highest level of support anywhere in the world. Support started to fall away in the following years and recovered slightly after the financial crisis in 2007/8, but has plummeted since 2009, falling 15 points in a year so that less than three in five (59%) now see free market capitalism as the best system for the future.
Finding from GlobeScan Radar Wave 2, 2010
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford.
As a new military-led government takes the reins in Cairo following Hosni Mubarak’s departure, our most recent issues polling is a reminder that bread-and-butter issues, as much as democratic reform, may have been instrumental in the popular uprising, and will be critical if public support for a new government is to be secured. Food prices, rather than free speech, appears to be the problem that most preoccupies Egyptians.
GlobeScan found last summer that Egyptians were more likely to have talked about rising food and energy prices than any other global problem over the last month (see map), and that Egypt was alongside Indonesia, Nigeria, and Mexico in seeing food and energy prices as among the top three most important global issues. In contrast, Egyptians ranked human rights abuses only as the ninth most serious global problem. With prices of food commodities across the world expected to soar further over months to come, can we expect to see Egyptian-style unrest spread across the developing world?
Finding from GlobeScan Radar Wave 2, 2010
For more information on this finding, please contact Sam Mountford.