Morning Consult reposted this
In today's charged geopolitical climate, there's a risk of conflating economic and geopolitical drivers of policymaking in ways that matter for both the private and public sectors, and which our high-frequency data can help to elucidate. Indonesia's latest bout of tariffs -- largely viewed as targeting China -- is a case in point. In the United States and Europe, recent bouts of tariff imposition targeting China — which have increasingly been tied to national security concerns — have coincided with net negative and periodically worsening views of China. Not so for Indonesia: Net favorability toward China among Indonesian adults has been trending gradually upwards since late 2021 when we first began tracking it, and has remained elevated following the tariff announcement, as we wrote about today in our Counter/Consensus email briefing. As Indonesia-watchers at The Diplomat have noted, the rationale for the tariffs was more economic than geopolitical, and “the issue has not been securitized in Indonesia to the extent that it has in the United States and other parts of the democratic West.” For those who might be inclined to view Indonesia’s latest tariff maneuvers as a tipping of the geopolitical needle in favor of the West at China’s expense, our data sounds a clear cautionary note that the two are not clearly related at present. For those interested in more: Sign up for Counter/Consensus here (it's free): https://lnkd.in/ebuXsjGm You'll find The Diplomat reference here: https://lnkd.in/gn882sAr
