“Republicans” don’t read their own history
This entire afternoon, “American Conservatives” on Fox News, and their Business network, were ranting about tariffs. Lecturing about how they make everything “more expensive,” “cheap imported goods are the norm” and the “damage” being caused. All the result of new tariffs enacted by the Trump administration and placed on various goods from Latin America and Canada. To them I ask:
How did the US, England, Canada, France, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China and other countries become economic powers?
Tariffs, Protectionism and the “National School” of economics.
Alexander Hamilton advocated them as part of his early economic proposals for the infant US. Washington, Adams and Jefferson all used them to protect the economy from cheap British and European imports, allowing for industries to develop and thrive. The American School, which dominated for nearly 200 years, believed this as its core doctrine. Successive Republican Presidents, Congressmen, and Senators supported them through the early 1930′s. During which time, America rose as an economic power and achieved their Golden Age.
For much of our history, Republicans were the party of tariffs and protectionism, while Democrats favored free trade.
One could argue, the failure of administrations after Hoover to maintain tariffs properly, and the contradictions of anti-trust, have created our current problems. Had American companies been allowed to expand without fear, Germany and Japan wouldn’t have achieved their early successes in the auto market during the 1970′s. Taxes would have never become increasingly damaging or a primary revenue source, while outsourcing may have been prevented.
During one interview, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s resident clown, criticized the very idea of imposing tariffs. In his opinion, cheap steel imports were desirable because “We don’t have the capacity to generate enough.” The fact that someone could sit there and support de-industrialization and dependence on foreign powers for basic materials is disgusting to say the least. The idea that outsourcing and the destruction of labor in various communities doesn’t matter borders on psychotic.
Now the “conservative” minds of Shepard Smith, Rove and the classical liberal tools of Fox think they know what’s best. Don’t they realize taxes could be reduced, with tariffs providing much of the national budget? Then they could shrink what they want and practice that “fiscal responsibility” they’re fond of talking about, but never doing.
Perhaps the stupid should listen to our 25th President, Republican William McKinley (1897-1901) on tariffs:
“[They say] if you had not had the Protective Tariff things would be a little cheaper. Well, whether a thing is cheap or dear depends upon what we can earn by our daily labor. Free trade cheapens the product by cheapening the producer. Protection cheapens the product by elevating the producer. 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.”
