Geoeconomics Group Research Seminar

Royal Military Academy

10 February 2026

Brussels

Dawid Walentek

Gent University

dawid.walentek@ugent.be

US Public and Economic Coercion: A Constrained Choice Experiment

• Economic coercion is a hot topic
• Inconsistent polls

Mixed feelings

Literature

• Economic coercion is on a rise
• More economic tools used to pursue political goals
• Protectionist demands and expectations of an active foreign policy
• Limited insights on the domestic preferences for economic coercion
• Existing research offers mixed findings
• Important contributions in other policy areas (e.g. trade or climate)
• Economic coercion is highly disruptive and consequential

Research Questions

• How much is the US public willing to pay for economic coercion?
  • Does the economic effect on the target state have a moderating role?
• Does the tool of economic coercion influence support?
• Does the relation with the target state affect public preferences?

Experimental design

• Constrained choice experiment (Hix et al., 2021)
• Four experimental groups (China/Canada & sanctions/tariffs)
• Five stages of the experiment
  • Information and active consent
  • Introduction
  • Unconstrained experiment
  • Constrained experiment
  • Questionnaire (General Social Survey)
• 1,000 US-based respondents
• ​Registered Report

Visualisation

Visualisation

Simulation

• Simulations help to test for power, increase transparency and simplify communication
• Current design is robust and allows to identify:
  • information effect (constrain)
  • direct effect (country or policy)
  • direct effects in tandem (country and policy)
  • interaction effect (country and policy specific combination
  • subgroup analysis (gender, education, ideology, last election, employment situation)
  • Overview of distributions of preferences

Pushing the envelope forward

• Is Trump successfully playing at the home crowd?
• How far and in which direction can Trump go with undoing the liberal order?
• What is the future of economic coercion?

Thank you