|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
The Father of the Constitution was also the father of tariffs. Indeed, the first piece of legislation passed was James Madison’s Tariff Act. Madison, known as the Father of the Constitution, saw tariffs as a driving purpose of the Constitution and a sustaining force of the new government.
The United States was deep in debt after the American Revolution and its previous system of government had made it impossible to either pay its debts or form a national economic policy. And without it, individual states and powerful figures would be corrupted by British and French agents into manipulating the country and eventually doom the nation to collapse in a civil war.
As I described in my book, ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left’, Rhode Island’s radicals had nearly scuttled the Constitution over economic policy. And when the Tariff Act was passed, Rhode Island still had not joined, and some suspected it never would, and instead would go on serving as an entry point for dumping foreign cargoes into America.
That collaboration with British economic warfare against the new country led to threats of annexation until the radicals ruling Rhode Island finally agreed to join the constitutional union.
The American Revolution had been fought and won, but British economic warfare threatened to bring the nation to its knees, cutting off American ships from British territories, while dumping British cargoes in an unregulated fashion in the United States. Much like President Trump, Madison understood that the only thing that might put a stop to this were national tariffs.
The Tariff Act of 1789, immediately following the Constitution, almost wholly financed the federal government created by that magnificent document, while also keeping it small enough so that it would not balloon in size the way that it did once income taxes were introduced during the Civil War, the Progressive Era, and catastrophically during the New Deal and Great Society.
Without tariffs, there would have been no Constitution and no United States of America.
The economic imbalance between America and Britain had been one of the foundational causes of the American Revolution, but simply pushing British governors and armies out of the Colonies had not actually changed the imbalance in trade or the ability of the British to set all the rules. As long as the British government had the ability to set a unified economic policy while the American Colonies were a mass of widely varying rules with states selling out each other, America might be legally independent, but would never be economically independent.
The next generation of American foreign and economic policy would be taken up by that great question of achieving national independence. Including Madison’s presidential administration.
Madison’s greatest tariff challenge came after the War of 1812. The Father of the Constitution had been forced to flee the nation’s capital during the British assault. In a haunting recreation of the way the Founding Fathers had been forced to flee during the American Revolution, the president found a horse and huddled in a country house trapped by the storm. While the White House was burned, Madison and the country survived.
But the war still wasn’t over.
The British, having once again failed to conquer America by force, turned back to economic warfare, dumping large amounts of products at low prices in the United States in order to cripple its already shaky manufacturing whose poor state had been credited with the country’s near defeat. The growing industrialization of warfare had already made it obvious that wars would not be won by courageous charges or compelling rhetoric, but by factories like the ones that would determine the outcome of the future Civil War, not to mention the coming two world wars.
If America could not maintain an independent industry, then it would also have no future.
Madison, like other Founding Fathers, also understood that tariffs were not just a means of economic warfare or a scheme to finance the government, but also a means of building up American industries. And his Tariff of 1816 is regarded as the first true ‘protectionist’ tariff.
The British had wanted to bury American industry under a flood of cheap imports, instead it was they who were forced to rethink their economic policies. Less than a decade after, the British Parliament passed the Reciprocity of Duties Act. The United States had used tariffs to create mutual trade agreements with other nations making America less dependent on British trade. The road to improving America’s balance of economic power with Britain remained a very long one, but it was tariffs that slowly forced British concessions for American trade from the West Indies to Manchester.
American political leaders and presidents had attempted to convince Britain along with other nations of the moral and economic virtues of free trade only to get nowhere. British thinkers could articulate those virtues better than we could. Practicing them was another matter. What did work was the strategic use of trade barriers to build relationships from a position of strength.
And that is what President Trump is trying to do.
It’s possible for good people to disagree about tariffs, and like any other form of warfare, it’s possible to win or lose. In the generations since the American Revolution, some restrictionist policies were successful in building up the domestic economy and making America respected abroad, while others brought domestic economic misery and were laughed off abroad.
But much like blanket opposition to war is foolish, so is the blanket opposition to tariffs.
A school of libertarianism arose that asserts that restricting Chinese imports is no different than banning us from buying a glass of lemonade from a child’s roadside stand. Under this ideology, nation states don’t exist, only individuals do, and nothing must interfere with ‘free trade’ even when it’s a malicious effort by an enemy state to bring us to our knees and then enslave us.
Had we followed this ideology from the beginning, there would have been no America.
We don’t have to imagine too hard what Madison would have done about China. Or the course Alexander Hamilton, who argued that, “preserv[ing] the balance of trade in favor of a nation ought to be a leading aim of its policy” would have pursued to resist China’s economic warfare.
Good people may disagree about any specific application of tariffs, but we should not forget that America was built on tariffs and that the Father of the Constitution was also the father of tariffs.
Awesome history
Madison and Patrick Henry with the demand for a Bill of Rights are really underappreciated
Founding Fathers had a lot of brilliant men who for once truly wanted a better world for the common man
Divine providence to the core .
“Divine providence to the core.”
Don’t know about that.
Might want to read “God Against The Revolution-The Loyalist Clergy’s Case Against The American Revolution,” by Gregg L. Frazer.
Then see what you think about the American Revolution.
I’ll take The Bill of Rights for 500 Alex ..
“The buzzer got you, sorry. Next contestant, how about you?”
And while you’re standing there, please provide the audience with book, chapter and verse for, “Divine Providence at its core.”
The American Revolution was to push YHVH’S Divine Plan for humans – Like religion, when humans are involved, it is not perfect – does it get the job done – to the best of future humans to assimilate and improve – USA is a project that must be continually tailored to meet the times preserving the fundamentals of the documents which have stood for 250 years.
President Trump had 2020 rigged and stolen from him – We saw the terrible difference when outside and inside treasonous criminals attempt to seize USA for their own control to destroy the power and sovereignty of the USA as we saw in the President AutoPen 4 years of pure hell, death and destruction!
it is only fitting and proper we have President Trump to usher in USA’s 250th year!
Here you go Matt,
“Divine providence is the governance of God by which He, with wisdom and love, cares for and directs all things in the universe. The doctrine of divine providence asserts that God is in complete control of all things. He is sovereign over the universe as a whole (Psalm 103:19), the physical world (Matthew 5:45), the affairs of nations (Psalm 66:7), human destiny (Galatians 1:15), human successes and failures (Luke 1:52), and the protection of His people (Psalm 4:8). This doctrine stands in direct opposition to the idea that the universe is governed by chance or fate.”
“Through divine providence God accomplishes His will. To ensure that His purposes are fulfilled, God governs the affairs of men and works through the natural order of things. The laws of nature are nothing more than God’s work in the universe. The laws of nature have no inherent power; rather, they are the principles that God set in place to govern how things normally work. They are only “laws” because God decreed them.”
https://www.gotquestions.org/divine-providence.html
What are you so angry about douchebag ?
So what if a loyalist came up with an argument against the American Revolution> The king was considered the most direct line to God. Most arguments can be fleshed out either way. Words often lose their meaning in a screed such as this. Debating points rather than anything of substance
Is it like reading that whiney little socialist communist liberal snot Hitler and his struggles?
How did something like that ever become popular with a whiney title like Mein Kampf? In 1930’s Germany?
Makes you think Oprah may have actually been a German who helped the Nazis propagandize in a past life. After reincarnating, it is not hard to think her skills were once again used to make millions into liberal socialists. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Michelle always talked about her “struggles”. I think she was trolling us by using Hitler’s words.
Some of my ancestors were “loyalists.” You losers lost.
Excellent coverage, thanks Daniel !!!!!
The section on Rhode Island in your book I found fascinating. Since then I learned that Rhode Island has some excellent harbors that played an important part in Naval History of the period.
You don’t trade at all with outlaw dictatorships. If it’s immoral to buy a television set from a thief who stole it from your neighbor, and it is, it is absolutely evil to buy cotton from the antebellum South produced by slaves, to trade with Nazi Germany, Soviet dictatorship, or communist China.
“It is immoral for the U.S. (and for all free or semi-free countries) to engage in any undertaking with Soviet Russia as a partner. It is particularly immoral if the undertaking is intellectual or cultural. Such a partnership necessarily implies and proclaims the acceptance of Soviet Russia as a peaceful, well-meaning, civilized country.” – Ayn Rand
In case you hadn’t heard, the Soviet Union disintegrated in the 1990s. You are only out of it by some 35 years.
Not to mention you are always out of it each and every day.
You really should understand an issue before commenting on it
This comment was meant for THX 1138
You don’t trade with criminals. You don’t trade with the Italian Mafia, Hitler, Stalin, and you don’t trade with the CCP.
Yeah she was a bit of a Boy Scout before Women could join.
If James Madison isn’t a strong enough (silent) advocate Of President Trump, I don’t know who is.
Tariff the fuck out of the those foreigners.
Tariffs on China and the rest of those who would wreck America
Using your “logic”, why haven’t the TARIFFS the REST of the WORLD have on the USA “wrecked” THEIR NATIONS??
This is a huge topic. My 2 cents might be worth reading. What were taxes/tariffs? They were about the only way to raise money for government EXCEPT whiskey taxes! Remember the Whiskey Rebellion? Old George wanted money and killed a bunch of Pennsylvanians for it.
The tariffs were the other way to raise enough money. Remember there was no payroll tax or income tax. Everyone was paid in cash with no receipts. The system almost failed with the Nullification standoff under Andy Jackson. The South was paying 80% of the taxes and almost 90% of the money was spent on Yankee infrastructure projects. Slavery was the headline for political reasons but money caused the Civil War as all wars.
There was no money for war so crooked Abe printed greenbacks and started income tax. Both were totally illegal or unconstitutional. That was why he had to start a draft because the kids did not volunteer and protested or daddy BOUGHT their way out.
The greatest industrial expansion in history started about 1870 and extended to 1914. The tariff averaged about 40%. The rest of taxes were Whiskey taxes. They were over 45%. That was why when prohibition was passed by the do-gooders, income tax was renewed, Otherwise there would be no government socialist or otherwise. THE HORROR!
The California government is so incompetent that can’t even make money taxing Pot. They should have followed the alcohol tax model, tax it just a little at first, then gradually raise the tax over time. Instead they started out with a massive tax and draconian regulations that drove legal sellers out of business and strengthened the underground market 🙂
Yes, I can say from personal experience that the black market for pot overwhelms the legal one in California. you can always count on the CA government to screw things up.
I’ll think of that the next time I blaze up a joint with a girlfriend. I don’t care where she gets it. All the federal restrictions CA gleefully imposes on pot just make the black market supreme. IDIOTS.
Madame- George Washington didn’t kill a bunch of his fellow countrymen because he wanted money.
It’s a crass, untrue and unnecessary statement
THANK YOU FOR STANDING UP for George, the actual Father of our country. There has been a lot of negative garbage suggested about him but I don’t think it rings true with his record. I believe he was a terrific idealist and our first freedom fighter.
And a brilliant military strategist
Heh, heh George really gets reamed for his strategy, but both he and Knox took out books when they found out they were initially picked for military leadership and learned as they went. How many people can do that? Self taught? He knew how his people would respond, was an excellent judge of personnel and he understood, although he wouldn’t be able to put a name to it, that he was up against the finest Army and Navy in the world and brilliantly used the only strategy that would work-fought a guerilla war against the British.
Too often George needs defending. He was light on his feet too.
Washington was the best President America ever had. Even Trump comes in second place to him. There wouldn’t even be an America if it weren’t for Washington.
Comparing today’s tariff climate with that which existed between the US and GB is a false equivalency. Trade was limited without the intricate suppl;y chains of today. Certainly tariffs are legitimate tools of global politics but Trump’s hamfisted efforts are swatting flies with a hand grenade.
There are better sources of information than CNN and MSNBC. Considering how well President Trump fared handling the influence of the federal government during his first term, and how much he has learned since then, you might want to evaluate his actions with a bit more discernment in his second term.
Yeah, foreign countries should be able to fuck America with tariffs but we shouldn’t be able to retaliate.
Eat a bag of dicks, Frenchie.
Anyone who reads about Our Founding Fathers realize how INTELLIGENT and BRAVE they were! It’s amazing too when you see how YOUNG they were! I highly doubt a group of 20 or 30 year olds could form a Government that has stood for 250 years – many can’t even get out of their parents’ basements!
The American Revolution was to push YHVH’S Divine Plan for humans – Like religion, when humans are involved, it is not perfect – does it get the job done – to the best of future humans to assimilate and improve – USA is a project that must be continually tailored to meet the times preserving the fundamentals of the documents which have stood for 250 years.
President Trump had 2020 rigged and stolen from him – We saw the terrible difference when outside and inside treasonous criminals attempt to seize USA for their own control to destroy the power and sovereignty of the USA as we saw in the President AutoPen 4 years of pure hell, death and destruction!
it is only fitting and proper we have President Trump to usher in USA’s 250th year!
I think it’s interresting to note that most of the signers of the Declaration were Freemasons, who believed in God and saw liberty as a divine right. There was, after a fashion, a Divinity to what they were trying to accomplish.
Our founders risked everything, supported by only a tiny fraction of the colonists around them, to free us from the very mercantile oligarchy that global corporations, hireling legislators, and financial profiteers have built since Bill Clinton sold WTO access to China for tuppence. Our founders valued independence, knowing that being a client colony of monopolist English lords would only lead to penury. President Trump is leading a revolution against the institutions, corporations, and nations that have driven manufacturing out of America, created dependency on foreign enemies, sickened our populace, and disheartened our people. Tariffs are a weapon in the revolution, but not the only one. We must also greatly reduce the power of the federal government in our daily lives, getting it out of the business of “health care,” “education,” and “public safety.” These hydra-headed monsters do exactly the opposite of their names. Shrinking the footprint of the federal government is essential to our national well-being.