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Tariffs Made America Great
The American Conservative ^ | July 27, 2018 | PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

Posted on 07/27/2018 12:40:48 PM PDT by xzins

“Make America Great Again” will, given the astonishing victory it produced for Donald Trump, be recorded among the most successful slogans in political history.

Yet it raises a question: how did America first become the world’s greatest economic power?

In 1998, in The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy, this writer sought to explain.

However, as the blazing issue of that day was Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, it was no easy task to steer interviewers around to the McKinley Tariff.

Free Trade Shouldn't Be a Litmus Test for Conservatives The Moral Case Against Trump's Import Tariffs Free trade propaganda aside, what is the historical truth?

As our Revolution was about political independence, the first words and acts of our constitutional republic were about ensuring America’s economic independence.

“A free people should promote such manufactures as tend to render them independent on others for essentials, especially military supplies,” said President Washington in his first message to Congress.

The first major bill passed by Congress was the Tariff Act of 1789.

Weeks later, Washington imposed tonnage taxes on all foreign shipping. The U.S. Merchant Marine was born.

In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wrote in his famous Report on Manufactures: “The wealth…independence, and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation…ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These compromise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defence.”

During the War of 1812, British merchants lost their American markets. When peace came, flotillas of British ships arrived at U.S. ports to dump underpriced goods and to recapture the markets they’d lost.

Henry Clay and John Calhoun backed James Madison’s Tariff of 1816, as did ex-free traders Jefferson and John Adams. It worked.

In 1816, the U.S. produced 840,000 yards of cloth. By 1820, it was 13,874 thousand yards. America had become self-sufficient.

Financing “internal improvements” with tariffs on foreign goods would become known abroad as “The American System.”

Said Daniel Webster, “Protection of our own labor against the cheaper, ill-paid, half-fed, and pauper labor of Europe is…a duty which the country owes to its own citizens.”

This is economic patriotism, a conservatism of the heart. Globalists, cosmopolites, and one-worlders recoil at phrases like “America First.”

Campaigning for Henry Clay, “The Father of the American System,” in 1844, Abe Lincoln issued an impassioned plea: “Give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth.”

Battling free trade during the Polk presidency, Congressman Lincoln said, “Abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government must result in the increase of both useless labor and idleness and…must produce want and ruin among our people.”

In our time, the abandonment of economic patriotism produced in Middle America what Lincoln predicted, and what got Trump elected.

From the Civil War to the 20th century, U.S. economic policy was grounded in the Morrill Tariffs, named for Vermont congressman and senator Justin Morrill who, as early as 1857, had declared: “I am for ruling America for the benefit, first, of Americans, and, for the ‘rest of mankind’ afterwards.”

William McKinley, the veteran of Antietam who gave his name to the McKinley Tariff, declared four years before being elected president: “Free trade results in our giving our money…our manufactures and our markets to other nations. …It will bring widespread discontent. It will revolutionize our values.”

Campaigning in 1892, McKinley said, “Open competition between high-paid American labor and poorly paid European labor will either drive out of existence American industry or lower American wages.”

Substitute “Asian labor” for “European labor,” and is this not a fair description of what free trade did to U.S. manufacturing these last 25 years? The results have been some $12 trillion in trade deficits, arrested wages for our workers, six million manufacturing jobs lost, 55,000 factories, and plants shut down.

McKinley’s future vice president Teddy Roosevelt agreed with him: “Thank God I am not a free trader.”

What did the Protectionists produce?

From 1869 to 1900, GDP quadrupled. Budget surpluses ran for 27 straight years. The U.S. debt was cut two-thirds to 7 percent of GDP. Commodity prices fell 58 percent. America’s population doubled, but real wages rose 53 percent. Economic growth averaged 4 percent a year.

And the United States, which began this era with half of Britain’s production, ended it with twice Britain’s production.

Under Warren Harding, Cal Coolidge, and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, GDP growth between 1922 and 1927 hit 7 percent, an all-time record.

Economic patriotism put America first, and made America first.

Of GOP free traders, the steel magnate Joseph Wharton, whose name graces the college Trump attended, said it well: “Republicans who are shaky on protection are shaky all over.”

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: americafirst; globalism; goldbugs; openbordersbuchanan; pitchforkkpat; strawmanarguments; tariff; tariffs; trade; trump
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1 posted on 07/27/2018 12:40:48 PM PDT by xzins
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To: All

From the article:

“In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wrote in his famous Report on Manufactures: “The wealth…independence, and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation…ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These compromise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defence.”


2 posted on 07/27/2018 12:41:16 PM PDT by xzins (Retired US Army chaplain. Support our troops by praying for their victory.)
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To: xzins

I’m skeptical that tariffs made America great, and Hamilton was a big-gov’t liberal.


3 posted on 07/27/2018 12:44:53 PM PDT by Sopater (Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? - Matthew 20:15a)
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To: Sopater

What really made America great was that we had a massive untapped frontier to grow into ... and the ingenuity to tap it productively.


4 posted on 07/27/2018 12:49:10 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them ... like Russians will.")
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To: Sopater

I agree.


5 posted on 07/27/2018 12:50:17 PM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Sopater

Taxes make America Great?


6 posted on 07/27/2018 12:50:35 PM PDT by Blue House Sue
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To: Sopater

High import tariffs worked well for America for it’s first 180 years. It was a mistake to abandon them.

Low tariffs with trading partners that are equal in wages and social structure like Europe can make both countries marginally wealthier but the downside is they become economically entangled and dependent on each other. Washington warned us about unneccessary foreign entanglements.

Low tariffs with third world countries that have lots of unemployment, simply offshores our industries and jobs to those third world countries. Resulting in higher unemployment here, the loss of industries and associated jobs, and again results in unnecessary entanglement. It lowers prices to consumers but it results in unemployed Americans so it has multiple negative effects.


7 posted on 07/27/2018 12:51:31 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: Sopater

High import tariffs worked well for America for it’s first 180 years. It was a mistake to abandon them.

Low tariffs with trading partners that are equal in wages and social structure like Europe can make both countries marginally wealthier but the downside is they become economically entangled and dependent on each other. Washington warned us about unneccessary foreign entanglements.

Low tariffs with third world countries that have lots of unemployment, simply offshores our industries and jobs to those third world countries. Resulting in higher unemployment here, the loss of industries and associated jobs, and again results in unnecessary entanglement. It lowers prices to consumers but it results in unemployed Americans so it has multiple negative effects.


8 posted on 07/27/2018 12:51:32 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: xzins

If someone wants cheap imports then they need to be forced to be fired from their job since they demand other Americans get fired from theirs.


9 posted on 07/27/2018 12:53:25 PM PDT by CodeToad
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To: xzins

Jefferson’s Embargo killed US Trade...not the war of 1812.


10 posted on 07/27/2018 12:53:49 PM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Blue House Sue
Taxes make America Great?

Right, sounds ludicrous, doesn't it.
11 posted on 07/27/2018 1:01:09 PM PDT by Sopater (Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? - Matthew 20:15a)
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To: DannyTN

If you say it twice, does that somehow make it more believable?


12 posted on 07/27/2018 1:01:55 PM PDT by Sopater (Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? - Matthew 20:15a)
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To: xzins

historical context is important.

hamilton was primarily agruing with jeffersonian faction in that report, who not only believed that an agrarian economy was the ideal, but came to believe that manufacturers and merchants were enemies to be defeated by any means necessary.

as soon as they gained power, they did their level best to destroy merchants and manufacturers with the embargo act, knowing full well it was devastating the nascent american economy in the process. it was also the first time in history that the awesome authority of the central government was used to coerce (read: force them to do something they did not want to do) american citizens.

trying to justify tariffs in 2018 with the decades long death grapple waged by jefferson and hamilton is just wrong, and, I suspect, those making that argument know it’s wrong.


13 posted on 07/27/2018 1:04:27 PM PDT by JohnBrowdie
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To: xzins

this is just a weird thread.

modern tariffs gave us predatory labor unions and the worlds crappiest automobiles, just two quick examples. the proper amount of tariffs is no tariffs, which is exactly the president’s plan.

shielding anything from competition is bad for consumers, and even the industry being shielded (in the long run, at least)


14 posted on 07/27/2018 1:08:54 PM PDT by JohnBrowdie
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To: Sopater

The fact that I say it at all should make it more believable.

If I double post it, that’s just assurance it’s really me.


15 posted on 07/27/2018 1:10:16 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: Sacajaweau; Sopater

Why did Harley Davidson respond to high overseas tariffs by putting a plant there?


16 posted on 07/27/2018 1:13:42 PM PDT by xzins (Retired US Army chaplain. Support our troops by praying for their victory.)
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To: JohnBrowdie

It’s true that Jefferson wanted the US to remain an agrarian economy and buy our manufactured goods from Europe. But Jefferson changed his minds when in his words “the unbelievable happened” and Europe cut us off from manufactured goods.

That’s the point where he realized that America needed a strong manufacturing base to survive as a free state.

That’s a lesson that has been lost on our free traitors. And it’s one of the reasons, I favor having high import tariffs.
Import tariffs lesson our dependence on other countries.


17 posted on 07/27/2018 1:14:54 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: Sacajaweau
Jefferson’s Embargo killed US Trade...not the war of 1812.
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18 posted on 07/27/2018 1:18:44 PM PDT by JohnBrowdie
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To: JohnBrowdie; P-Marlowe; Sacajaweau; Sopater

A response to tariffs is to build plants in the country imposing the tariffs.

Also, a tariff taxes everyone equally and is virtually invisible. So, who pays no taxes in America?

Don’t you think they should have some skin in the game?

America had no income tax in those years, but a graduated tax that is so graduated that half the country isn’t paying anything is an abomination for a few reasons. The most important is that the non-taxed in our era take a lot and provide very little.

Also, as a matter of national security, a nation should be self sufficient. All the way from heavy metals to shirts and shorts, a nation should be self-sufficient. To do otherwise is eventually to invite attack and overthrow.


19 posted on 07/27/2018 1:19:38 PM PDT by xzins (Retired US Army chaplain. Support our troops by praying for their victory.)
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To: DannyTN

that didn’t happen. jefferson was a francophile, a utopian, a wreckless innovator, he probably committed cowardice before the enemy, and if he was alive today, he would be bernie sanders.

you need to read up on TJ. I would start with his second term as president.


20 posted on 07/27/2018 1:22:44 PM PDT by JohnBrowdie
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