In the beginning there was the original president and cabinet. Hamilton was for a tariff wall while Jefferson was not. America, although it won the war, still depended on England for manufactured goods. Jefferson wanted it to stay that way. It was too hot in the South to have factories anyway. Jefferson not only preferred the quiet agrarian life, he did not want the south to depend on the north for manufactured goods. If both north and south were dependent on England things would be equal. So things stayed where they were as the two sides were balanced and the status quo would remain until both agreed on a change.
Then came the Napoleonic Wars and first the Federalst president Adams quasi-warred on the French and then the next president, Jefferson, quasi-warred on the English.
Jefferson thought he could hurt the English with what was called an "Embargo". Jefferson banned trading with the English.
But this played right into the Federalists hands. With no manufactured goods coming in from England, Amercians had to build their own factories.
People with money invested it into the new factories and they soared as they had to make enough goods to replace what the USA was getting from the whole British Empire!!!
Seeing that the Embargo did not harm Britain very much Jefferson went to remove it. But it was now too late. People had invested their fortunes into industry and if Jefferson brought things back to what they were the richest men would be bankrupted and there would be a total collapse of the economy. So Jefferson had no choice but to keep most of it, not with a total banning, but with a high tariff. Amercians could now buy British goods again but only if they paid higher prices than for American goods.
Things pretty much stayed this way from the early 1800s until World War II.
Yes, the North and the South fought in Congress every year in between over how high or low it should be but the Tariff Wall remained at one level or another.
During the Second World War the wealth of the planet went into the USA, including most of the British Empire's gold. The allies got so pitifully poor that many of the tariffs were dropped as they were nowhere near being a competitor of the USA.
Tariffs were THE most argued item in Comgress from 1787 (or before if you count the British taxes) until the 1940s.
But in 1945 America was a collossus that financially ruled the world. So who cared about a Tariff Wall if there is no competition?? No one cared about Tariffs in 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952m 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969. In 1969 those of you old enough to recall the TONIGHT SHOW with Johnny Carson might remember that his main running joke that year was "Tariffs". For most of the year he would say jokes about tariffs in his opening monologue. Because they had been considered a funny bit of ancient history for many years. Tariffs were like pantaloons or zeppelins. A whole new generation had grown up without them and they never heard the arguments as to why they had existed.
In 1970 I recall being in my dorm room reading a TIME magazine article about West Germany and Japan finally getting on their feet again, which worried me. Then in 1971 the August runaway inflation hit and people got more scared that something was wrong. But in 1972 the factories were still doing so well that the unions stopped asking for more money but more free time to spend it. So factories started cutting down to giving five days of very high wages for just four days of work. In the 1990s ABC-TV had an all-night show where they would run the 1972 news shows that showed how rich we once were.
Then came 1973 and the Old Stalinists of the 1940s and the new spoiled Hippies of the 60s went after Nixon over Watergate. And when the Muslims cut off the oil because Nixon rushed arms to Israel in the October 1973 war, the back of our economy was broken. And with no Tariff Wall to protect it it was, and has been, increasingly crushed from them until now.
The people who know of the old Tariff days dont want the rest of us to know it. And most Americans do not. WE know about the old Tariff Wall days and we don't have control of the media, our enemies do.
The people of 1783 until WWII had much less education but they heard of Tariffs all the time. We have much more education but the powers that be do not want the people to know about the history of tariffs. It is therefore up to us to pass the info on!!! 11-3-05