Poll: Support For Free Trade On The Rise

(CBS)

Sixty-six percent of Americans now think that, on balance, trade with other countries is good for the U.S. economy, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. That's up eight points from a poll in March of 2008.

In the poll, twenty-three percent say that trade is bad for the economy, and four percent say it has no effect.

The poll also finds that fewer Americans now think that trade restrictions are necessary to protect domestic industries, though 60 percent still think they are. Sixty-eight percent said the same thing in the poll last year.

Meanwhile, twenty-eight percent said that free trade must be allowed even if domestic industries are hurt by foreign competition. That's up from 24 percent last year.

Click here for more details from the poll (PDF)

Check back here at CBSNews.com or EconWatch at 6:30 p.m. ET for more poll results.

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This poll was conducted among a random sample of 998 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone April 1-5, 2009. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.

This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

[credibility2]

Those easily enamored with flowery rhetoric and who chose not to question but accept in toto anything that comes out of this man's mouth are pathetic. He has to resort to this type of rhetoric because he offers nothing of substance. He is very unimpressive and insubstantial.

[wardoglrs]

There hasn't been Free trade or Fair Trade since 1913. Look up Austrian Economics and lets get away from the bankers and there trick's. End the Fed bring the troops home end the empire mentality and shut down all bases around the world and then end all Federal Government extension's. Return to sound money principal's being Gold & Silver no more Paper for it is only the ghost of money and not money it's self

[whitemale08]

Come on CBS...

everytime you put out one of these corporate funded polls, you spread propaganda and lose credibility.

WE WANT FAIR TRADE!!!!!

NOT BRITISH 'FREE TRADE' AND 'GLOBALIZATION' NONSENSE!

WE WANT OUR HI-PAYING MIDDLE-CLASS JOBS BACK!

[trillion1]

We need Fair trade not Free trade.

[sjc_1]

The lesson from the early 30s is not to restrict trade, but FAIR trade is the way to go. If China or Japan want to export, but restrict imports, that does not help the trade balance.