You people have been brainwashed by the Leftist Keynesians.
America’s economy in the 1800’s was mainly a free market economy and practiced a great deal of free trade. As a result, the United States was not only the freest, but coming out of the 1800’s into the 1900’s, became the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
Why are so many on the Right including some on FR confused about the sublime benefits of freedom over government command and control? Freedom and the free market aren’t perfect, but freedom is WAY ahead of whatever’s in second place.
Not so...
“James Monroe
In 1822, President James Monroe observed that “whatever may be the abstract doctrine in favor of unrestricted commerce,” the conditions necessary for its success—reciprocity and international peace—”has never occurred and can not be expected.” Monroe said, “strong reasons… impose on us the obligation to cherish and sustain our manufactures.”
Abraham Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln declared, “Give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth.” Lincoln warned that “the abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government… must produce want and ruin among our people.”
Lincoln similarly said that, “if a duty amount to full protection be levied upon an article” that could be produced domestically, “at no distant day, in consequence of such duty,” the domestic article “will be sold to our people cheaper than before.”
Additionally, Lincoln argued that based on economies of scale, any temporary increase in costs resulting from a tariff would eventually decrease as the domestic manufacturer produced more.
Lincoln did not see a tariff as a tax on low-income Americans because it would only burden the consumer according to the amount the consumer consumed. By the tariff system, the whole revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods… the burthen of revenue falls almost entirely on the wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial and laboring many who live at home, and upon home products, go entirely free.
Lincoln argued that a tariff system was less intrusive than domestic taxation: The tariff is the cheaper system, because the duties, being collected in large parcels at a few commercial points, will require comparatively few officers in their collection; while by the direct tax system, the land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and other green thing.[15]
William McKinley
President William McKinley stated the United States’ stance under the Republican Party as:
Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man[16]. [It is said] that protection is immoral.... Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, ‘Buy where you can buy the cheapest’.... Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: ‘Buy where you can pay the easiest.’ And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.[17]
[Free trade] destroys the dignity and independence of American labor… It will take away from the people of this country who work for a living—and the majority of them live by the sweat of their faces—it will take from them heart and home and hope. It will be self-destruction.[18]<”
The US have never practiced Free Trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history#Abraham_Lincoln
I agree with you completely. In fact it was Britain the was a mercantile state, using tariffs as an economic sword against Europe and its own colonies. Yes, America experimented with tariffs here and there. I think however that what we have with China is very uneven, and is a trade agreement that gives China 90% of what they need, and 10% for America. What many don’t know that during the free market heyday in the US, the US actually had HIGHER wages than Europe. And all the rail roads that were supported by government largesse failed, and the private rail roads succeeded.
What a lie. The USA was completly funded by tariffs and excise taxes until 1913.
We seem to be in the minority here, but I agree with you.
Unions and onerous regulations are what made companies flee to foreign countries. My father worked in the steel mills all his life. Ridiculous demands by the union, such as thirteen weeks of vacation, hurt the industry badly.
In 1969 when my husband graduated from college he bought a new Toyota because it was a good car and cheap. I think that’s called freedom.
“Protecting the American worker”, smacks a bit of Socialism to me.