Local Framing of Economic Issues

Framing Big Issues in Local Terms

Last week’s post talked about the coming split in the Republican Party over two big, economic issues: tariffs and the deportation of undocumented immigrants. The post said that the split will create opportunities for Democrats, and in this post, I want to suggest ways to take advantage of those opportunities by framing issues in ways that will appeal to conservative, rural and small-town voters. The specific framing will depend on the conditions and ways of thinking in each community. People in a community have specific, local concerns and specific ways of expressing them, and effective framing should refer to the local concerns and make use to the local ways of expressing them. However, there are some general principles.

How Tariffs Can Harm a Community

First, effective framing of economic issues is not about social justice. It is about self-interest. So, if we are talking about tariffs, the focus should be on the harm that they are likely to do to a local community and its businesses. That means that in order to create effective framing, we will need to learn a lot about the communities that we want to affect.

Does a community produce agricultural or industrial products for export? If so, what are those products, and what countries are they exported to? What other countries produce the same products and  compete for the same markets? How might the community’s exports be hurt if the countries that are customers were to impose tariffs on the community’s exports? If the community’s businesses were hurt, how would that affect other aspects of its economy? How would it affect its tax base?

How Deporting Immigrants Can Harm a Community

If we are talking about the deportation of undocumented immigrants, we should also talk about the harm that losing them would do to a local community. Who are the community’s employers? Do they hire immigrants? What would happen to the employers if they lost those employees? Could the employers' businesses survive? Could they pay wages high enough to attract other employees? What about other community businesses? Are the immigrants customers of local businesses like grocery stores? If they left, what would happen to those businesses? What about the local housing market? How would the loss of immigrant residents affect the owners of rental properties? What would happen to the value of those properties?

What about the school system? Does it have many students who are immigrants or children of immigrants? If those students had to leave, how would that affect the budget of the local school district? Would the district lose some of the state aid it receives?  What about the local tax base? The immigrants pay sales taxes. How would the loss of that revenue affect the community’s budget?

We Need to Do Our Homework

These are some of the questions that can be asked. The answers should be framed in local terms. They should refer local businesses that might be hurt or to local public projects that might have to be canceled. Finding the answers will entail local research, but we do not have to start from scratch. Local people with interests at stake will be good sources of information. So, we have to go back with new questions to the people we have talked to.