Partisanship and Export Performance: The Conditional Effect of Left-Wing Government on Latin America’s Exportation

Are there noticeable differences among political parties over the countries’ export performance? Are left-wing parties more protectionist in free trade than right-wing parties in Latin American countries, where Import Substitution Industrialization remains a legacy? This paper argues that partisanship matters, but the effects on export are more heterogeneous than previous research has acknowledged. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the left-wing governments favor exportation, and they export more instead of being protectionist when domestic industries have underperformed. Cross-country data of 15 Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1995 to 2019 supports our prediction of the conditional effect, leading to a variation in their export performance. We also test such a conditional effect on the subdivision of trade categories and trading partners, to assess more accurately how exactly this effect plays out. These findings have implications for the studies of trade and for Sino-Latin American relations in a changing global context.