Across contexts, trade flows decline with geographic distance. This paper explores the implications of that fact for politics. In a multi-region model of trade, differences in trade costs create uneven gains and losses from liberalization. This heterogeneity provides a basis for political divisions over trade policy, even in the absence of sector or factor differences. Some areas gain from lower prices and export opportunities, but regions that sell into those areas face greater competition. I calibrate this model to data on regional trade flows in the US to quantify these uneven gains and losses. This new measure captures different variation than commonly-used measures of trade exposure that ignore the geographic context. The modeled gains from liberalization are predictive of support for trade by voters and legislators, including in specifications that exploit within-unit variation in trade gains with different partners. Spatial frictions to trade create spatial cleavages over trade.

For an early stage draft, see https://theo-serlin.github.io/papers/draft_gravity_website.pdf