For example, a Northern manufacturer of cloth would benefit from a tariff on cloth imported from England, which would make English cloth less competitive.
Under Clay's proposal, the manufacturers of the North would be protected by relatively high tariffs and would become a large market for agricultural products of the West and the South.
After the Civil War, domestic policies continued to favor high tariffs, strengthened perhaps by the fact that industry was spreading through more of the nation. By the 1890s Congress had added an important innovation to the legislation: a delegation of power to the executive branch to adjust tariffs in specific circumstances. An early example was what are now called “countervailing duties.” These were tariffs the executive branch would order to counteract foreign subsidies on products exported to the United States. The executive branch, without further action by Congress, could measure the foreign subsidy and determine the duty to countervail, or compensate for, that duty. This became one of a large number of such adjustment devices.
President Woodrow Wilson, an ardent supporter of free trade, sought to reform tariffs.
Alexander Hamilton spoke of “infant industries.” Donald Trump speaks of slapping a 35% tariff on F-150’s to punish Ford for making them in Mexico. Is Ford Motor co. an infant industry? Is Trump Hamilton, now, sweetheart?