Whose China Shock? Partisanship, import exposure, and trade rhetoric in the US Senate

Trade among major powers is never purely economic; it is also a site of political conflict over blame, threat, and national interest. Why, then, do legislators facing similar trade shocks respond in such different ways? Focusing on US Senate rhetoric on trade with China between 2009 and 2023, this paper examines how partisanship conditions the translation of economic disruption into elite political speech. Drawing on sentiment analysis of Senate floor speeches and state-level measures of Chinese import exposure across two periods, it develops a partisan-conditioning argument: trade disruption acquires political meaning as parties interpret it. Democratic senators grew markedly more critical as local import exposure increased, especially under the earlier China Shock window. Republicans showed a much flatter response to early-period exposure and even a slightly positive association with later-period penetration. The China Shock left a durable mark on Senate discourse, but one structured by party, not geography alone.