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To: craig crawford who wrote (134587)11/10/2001 10:12:40 PM
From: craig crawford  Respond to of 164684
 
and now for madison...

Shifting Political Values
Period: 1810s
gliah.uh.edu
In a series of policy recommendations to Congress at the end of the War of 1812, President Madison revealed the extent to which Republicans had adopted Federalist policies. He called for a program of national economic development directed by the central government, which included creation of a second Bank of the United States to provide for a stable currency, a protective tariff to encourage industry, a program of internal improvements to facilitate transportation, and a permanent 20,000-man army.

But Madison's program found enthusiastic support among the new generation of political leaders. Convinced that inadequate roads, the lack of a national bank, and dependence on foreign imports had nearly resulted in a British victory in the war, these young leaders were eager to use the federal government to promote national economic development.



To: craig crawford who wrote (134587)11/11/2001 2:58:02 PM
From: Oeconomicus  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 164684
 
1. In the early years of it's existence, the US was not an industrial power. Hamilton saw protective tariffs as allowing American manufacturing industries an opportunity to develop where they might not otherwise be able to compete with more advanced European producers.

That's hardly the environment now. What evidence do you have that Hamilton would support tariffs to protect mature industries in a very advanced economy?

2. Tariffs were primarily used as a source of government revenue, BTW. Protection of US industry or fostering its development was a secondary consideration and there was much disagreement over it, not just between protectionists and free traders, but also between the states as each had its own ideas about what industries should be protected and what goods they should be able to import with little or no duties.

Still, since this was the primary source of federal revenue until this century, your finding of so many "great American protectionists" is neither surprising (since you define as protectionist anyone who ever favored a tariff, whether actually for protectionist reasons or not) nor relevant to today.

Some were actually protectionists (in a wholly different environment from today) and some simply saw a need for greater revenues to fund government operations (Could these great Americans have actually favored a strong, organized federal government? No! Say it ain't so!).

"The first necessity of the new government was revenue, the want of which had wrecked the Confederation. The federal treasury was literally empty. For the purpose of federal revenue indirect was preferred to direct taxation, and customs duties to excises. Among the advantages of import duties over other forms of taxation were that they would not conflict with state taxes, since the Constitution had taken from the states the right to levy such taxes or excises. The debates on the tariff of 1789 reveal clearly the clash between the agricultural and the manufacturing interests and sections, and they brought forth a number of arguments that have been the stock in trade of American tariff controversy ever since. The New England representatives, in the interest of commerce, shipping and the distilling industry, desired a low duty on molasses and a high duty on rum; Pennsylvania, the leading protectionist state, ... wanted a low duty on rum, but high duties on iron and steel; South Carolina asked for a high duty on hemp. The protectionists urged that infant industries should be protected... The enemies of protection retailed the theoretical arguments for free trade and ...the benefits that would result from commercial intercourse as free as possible with foreign countries... Even Madison, the leader of the free traders in the house, did not deny that protective duties were warranted under certain conditions. The tariff was from the outset a great fiscal success, and for a century and a quarter, in all times that may be considered normal, the federal revenue was derived principally from import duties.
The Constitution of the United States, An Historical Survey of its Formation, Robert L. Schuyler, MacMillan, 1928.

The biggest irony of your attempts to ally yourself and Patzi with the patriots who formed this country and wrote our constitution is that the anti-federalists of the time said that the constitution was a threat to the sovereignty of the states and that it was a sure route to the kind of tyranny they had all fought in the revolution. The federalists were seen as dangerous proponents of a big and powerful government that would trample states rights and personal liberty.