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.
I agree. Hamilton was a big government federalist who looked to mix the US in the affairs of Britain.
Funny how we forget that conservatives were very frustrated with union enterprises being protected by tariffs. Auto tariffs would seriously have me questioning the wisdom of Trump, as they made the big 3 inefficient and lazy.
Better than being an anglophile.
In the end the anti-federalists were correct. Look at 2018 and what the federalists have brought us. Massive government interfering in everything from healthcare to education. With a huge entrenched Deep State looking to mount a coup.
No, Americans did. Tariffs are not in accord with economic freedom. They are government interference.
Tariffs worked because we weren’t taxing internally and were not taxing citizens to death!
[ No, Americans did. Tariffs are not in accord with economic freedom. They are government interference. ]
If we have no internal taxes, like income taxes, we can have internal free trade and prosperity. Any over expensive good from over seas will be supplanted by invented internally supplied alternatives.
Plus having a TARIFF ONLY form of fed gov funding means fed gov has a VESTED INTEREST in protecting the damned borders.
Tariffs are less intrusive than income taxes to citizens... or land taxes which is why tariffs are in the constitution and income taxes had to be added later by the bastardass progressives in 1913.
Absolute anachronistic drivel
This malarky is as bad as the left wing hispanic socialist rants
Income taxes are MORE intrusive than Tariffs.
So if it is all or nothing, I would rather have no income taxes and lots Tariffs than oppressive high income taxes and no tariffs.
Internal taxation is more THEFT than Tariffs.
Federal taxation of income is a giant millstone around the neck of our citizens.
If the people didn’t want it, the congress would get rid of it
[ If the people didn’t want it, the congress would get rid of it ]
The people always happily vote to steal from peter so they Paul could get some gimmies...
Go get your pills....... they seem to have worn off
[ Go get your pills....... they seem to have worn off ]
Sophie’s Choice for FedGov Funding time.
A. Income taxes, No Tariffs
B. No Income Taxes, Tariffs
PICK ONE:
Bonus: Which one gives the federal government an incentive to protect our borders?
[ 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. ]
If the federal government was ONLY funded by tariffs you can also bet you bottom dollar that the borders would be patrolled like they are supposed to be since any smuggling of people/goods would be undercutting the money that makes it to Washington D.C.
bump
If you think about it, the iPhone is incredibly sophisticated in its circuitry and features. If Hamilton had in his hand an iPhone 8+, well, he would be pretty darn impressed.
NO TARIFFS is BAD.
It shifts tax burderns on to other people just like Socialism runs out of other people’s money.
IMPORT TARIFFS is GOOD.
If you are allowed to trade at the lowest price with SLAVES from foreign nations,
your job producers must compete directly with Slaves,
and your job becomes SLAVERY.
Then the quality of products also becomes poor.
Connect the dots please. Or one day you shall be wearing chains.
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