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.
Manufacturing cellphones has NOTHING to do with labor or customer market size.
I used to engineer electronics. There was a period of time when manufacturing occurred in BOTH countries simultaneously. The only reason that was not sustained is America has BAD TARIFFS.
If you buy ANY product cheaply from a Slave country, you also become a Slave country, because mobody competes with slaves.
300 million Americans is plenty market size to build any product here and cheaply. Fact is, each population market should make their own stuff, because having a Communist China building cell phones is dangerous. They have no 1A.
The reason we build in foreign countries is Congress can skim bribes. Simple.
“The only reason that was not sustained is America has BAD TARIFFS.”
Well, let me ask you; are tariffs placed on American imports by other countries just as bad?
I never hear Mark Levin mention that American imports are taxed.
“If you buy ANY product cheaply from a Slave country, you also become a Slave country, because mobody competes with slaves.”
Correct. Buchanan was quoting Lincoln to that effect.
Actually it has EVERYTHING to do with market size. Do you want to ship 3 billion units across the Pacific? No of course not. That would be stupid.
No 300 million American is NOT plenty of market size. We’re 1/4 the size of the Chinese market, and also 1/4 the size of the Indian market. Less that 1/10 the size of the general Asian market. We just aren’t that big a deal for a global market anymore.
BWAHAHAHA, each population market should build their own?! So they should have over 100 factories scattered across the globe?! That’s just plain stupid.
The reason we build in foreign countries is because it’s the right move. SIMPLE.
He who has the higher Import Tariffs, WINS !
Id take Tariffs over income tax any day of the week.
I’m not convinced.
If, as we are told, tariffs are actually a tax upon the American people, I’d rather pay that tax than pay income taxes. That way everyone pays their fair share based on what they buy from foreign sources.
If income taxes were 15% across the board (or some such number), they would be much more fair. The founders said that income taxes could only be apportioned to states who would then divide them out state-by-state to total the amount that state was assessed.
Bump! Bump! Bump!
You would have made a good isolationist Republican back in 1936.
I find this one very rich. If globalist Free Traitors™ like you had been around in the 1930's we'd have off shored key major industries to Japan and would of had to surrender on Dec. 8th. 1941.
No, there is a big difference in taxing consumption and taxing the fruits of one’s labor. If deny that then you are an idiot.
“No, there is a big difference in taxing consumption and taxing the fruits of one’s labor. If you deny that then you are an idiot.”
Since a producer’s decision to invest in labor is based on a comparison of expected AFTER TAX return on investment vs. the opportunity cost of capital, “the fruits of one’s labor” are ultimately being taxed either way.
Any idiot knows this.
Taxing work is evil because you cannot save and invest instead of consume IT IS TAKEN AWAY BEFORE YOU EVEN GET IT.
Anyone, including you, that defends the income tax is no better than an out and out Communist.
“Anyone, including you, that defends the income tax is no better than an out and out Communist.”
I’m not defending income tax or any other kind of tax - YOU are! You literally said “Tariffs made America Great”.
If you actually believe that is what made America great, then you have a very twisted understanding of American history. What made America great were the limits on the size and scope of government that the founders built into the constitution.
Those limits have been far exceeded in the last century and need to be reimposed in order to MAGA. It is the size and scope of government that is at issue, not the method of funding.
So far, you have called me an idiot and a communist, but name calling won’t make your argument any more sound.
Protecting industry did make America great. It was wise and it was the superior way to raise revenue. So yes, they did make America great. That is how profound the issue is an detriment the income tax has been.
The sooner radical fringe loon Free Traitors™ are squished out politically and get behind Trump or go elsewhere the better.
“Protecting industry did make America great.”
That is true, and the best way to protect industry is by not over taxing and over regulating it. Carrying the burden of an excessive government makes it impossible for industry to compete internationally.
And if our trading partners try to take advantage by under taxing or under regulating their industry - in other words by use of currency manipulation, subsidies, slave labor or by imposing tarriffs or other barriers to free trade, then yes, slap a PUNITIVE tariff on them until they fall into line.
Tariffs, or the threat of tariffs, offer a great incentive to our trading partners to play fair, and that is exactly how Trump is using them, which I fully support.
The use of taxation to fund government is a necessary evil, regardless of what form it takes. And when government grows beyond what is necessary, the taxation used to fund it goes from being a necessary evil to being just plain evil.
That’s where we are in 2018 - the size and scope of government is WAY beyond necessary - so any taxes raised to fund it are evil, regardless of the tax mechanism.
No tax of any kind raised to fund an excessive government is justified - period. The only justification for tariffs is to protect our industry from unfair competition. Once the unfair competition is discontinued, the tariffs should be immediately lifted for the benifit of all involved.
BS. The Republican Party was THE TARIFF Party until the globalist Free Traitors™ took it over after WWII and Bush (both) cemented it in place. You cannot place US workers in direct competition with 3rd world peasants without huge social/economic ramifications. That is why we need a tariff.
The progressives of the early 20th century started the income tax and how anyone can still support that evil thing is beyond me.
I wouldn’t call it a “tariff”, just an “anti-environmental, distance shipping tax”.
Local is the way to go and here is a great place to tax for externalities!
The progressives of the early 20th century started the income tax and how anyone can still support that evil thing is beyond me.”
Like I keep saying, I don’t support the income tax and never did.
Would you be willing to replace the income tax with payroll tax(to cover SS and MC), tariffs and a national sales tax? Because that would do it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.