{"id":12427,"date":"2019-05-15T10:32:30","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T14:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/?p=12427"},"modified":"2019-05-15T10:37:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T14:37:17","slug":"tariffs-the-taxes-that-made-america-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/tariffs-the-taxes-that-made-america-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Tariffs: The Taxes That Made America Great"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"790\" height=\"519\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screenshot_2019-05-15-Patrick-J-Buchanan-Official-Website.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12428\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screenshot_2019-05-15-Patrick-J-Buchanan-Official-Website.png 790w, https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screenshot_2019-05-15-Patrick-J-Buchanan-Official-Website-300x197.png 300w, https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screenshot_2019-05-15-Patrick-J-Buchanan-Official-Website-768x505.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 790px) 100vw, 790px\" \/><figcaption><em>Image Source: <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/lselibrary\/\" target=\"_blank\">LSELibrary on Flickr\u2026<\/a><\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Patrick J. Buchanan, Official Website<\/strong>, by Patrick J. Buchanan May 13, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Excerpt:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong><em>T<\/em>hat  the Smoot-Hawley Tariff caused the Depression of the 1930s is a New  Deal myth in which America\u2019s schoolchildren have been indoctrinated for  decades. The Depression began with the crash of the stock market in  1929, nine months before Smoot-Hawley became law. The real villain: The  Federal Res<em>erve\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><br>As his limo carried him to work at the White House Monday, Larry  Kudlow could not have been pleased with the headline in The Washington  Post: \u201cKudlow Contradicts Trump on Tariffs.\u201d<br> The story began: \u201cNational Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow  acknowledged Sunday that American consumers end up paying for the  administration\u2019s tariffs on Chinese imports, contradicting President  Trump\u2019s repeated inaccurate claim that the Chinese foot the bill.\u201d<br> A free trade evangelical, Kudlow had conceded on Fox News that  consumers pay the tariffs on products made abroad that they purchase  here in the U.S. Yet that is by no means the whole story.<br> A tariff may be described as a sales or consumption tax the consumer  pays, but tariffs are also a discretionary and an optional tax.<br> If you choose not to purchase Chinese goods and instead buy  comparable goods made in other nations or the USA, then you do not pay  the tariff.<br> China loses the sale. This is why Beijing, which runs $350 billion to  $400 billion in annual trade surpluses at our expense is howling  loudest. Should Donald Trump impose that 25% tariff on all $500 billion  in Chinese exports to the USA, it would cripple China\u2019s economy.  Factories seeking assured access to the U.S. market would flee in panic  from the Middle Kingdom.<br> Tariffs were the taxes that made America great. They were the taxes  relied upon by the first and greatest of our early statesmen, before the  coming of the globalists Woodrow Wilson and FDR.<br> Tariffs, to protect manufacturers and jobs, were the Republican  Party\u2019s path to power and prosperity in the 19th and 20th centuries,  before the rise of the Rockefeller Eastern liberal establishment and its  embrace of the British-bred heresy of unfettered free trade.<br> The Tariff Act of 1789 was enacted with the declared purpose, \u201cthe  encouragement and protection of manufactures.\u201d It was the second act  passed by the first Congress led by Speaker James Madison. It was  crafted by Alexander Hamilton and signed by President Washington.<br> After the War of 1812, President Madison, backed by Henry Clay and  John Calhoun and ex-Presidents Jefferson and Adams, enacted the Tariff  of 1816 to price British textiles out of competition, so Americans would  build the new factories and capture the booming U.S. market. It worked.<br> Tariffs financed Mr. Lincoln\u2019s War. The Tariff of 1890 bears the name  of Ohio Congressman and future President William McKinley, who said  that a foreign manufacturer \u201chas no right or claim to equality with our  own. \u2026 He pays no taxes. He performs no civil duties.\u201d<br> That is economic patriotism, putting America and Americans first.<br> <\/p><p>The Fordney-McCumber Tariff gave Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin  Coolidge the revenue to offset the slashing of Wilson\u2019s income taxes,  igniting that most dynamic of decades \u2014 the Roaring \u201920s.<br> That the Smoot-Hawley Tariff caused the Depression of the 1930s is a  New Deal myth in which America\u2019s schoolchildren have been indoctrinated  for decades.<br> The Depression began with the crash of the stock market in 1929, nine  months before Smoot-Hawley became law. The real villain: The Federal  Reserve, which failed to replenish that third of the money supply that  had been wiped out by thousands of bank failures.<br> Milton Friedman taught us that.<br> A tariff is a tax, but its purpose is not just to raise revenue but  to make a nation economically independent of others, and to bring its  citizens to rely upon each other rather than foreign entities.<br> The principle involved in a tariff is the same as that used by U.S.  colleges and universities that charge foreign students higher tuition  than their American counterparts.<br> What patriot would consign the economic independence of his country  to the \u201cinvisible hand\u201d of Adam Smith in a system crafted by  intellectuals whose allegiance is to an ideology, not a people?<br> What great nation did free traders ever build?<br> Free trade is the policy of fading and failing powers, past their  prime. In the half-century following passage of the Corn Laws, the  British showed the folly of free trade.<br> They began the second half of the 19th century with an economy twice  that of the USA and ended it with an economy half of ours, and equaled  by a Germany, which had, under Bismarck, adopted what was known as the  American System.<br> Of the nations that have risen to economic preeminence in recent  centuries \u2014 the British before 1850, the United States between 1789 and  1914, post-war Japan, China in recent decades \u2014 how many did so through  free trade? None. All practiced economic nationalism.<br> The problem for President Trump?<br> Once a nation is hooked on the cheap goods that are the narcotic free  trade provides, it is rarely able to break free. The loss of its  economic independence is followed by the loss of its political  independence, the loss of its greatness and, ultimately, the loss of its  national identity.<br> Brexit was the strangled cry of a British people that had lost its independence and desperately wanted it back. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>View the complete article including links at:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/tariffs-the-taxes-that-made-america-great-136986\">https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/tariffs-the-taxes-that-made-america-great-136986<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Patrick J. Buchanan, Official Website, by Patrick J. Buchanan May 13, 2019 Excerpt: That the Smoot-Hawley Tariff caused the Depression of the 1930s is a New Deal myth in which America\u2019s schoolchildren have been indoctrinated for decades. The Depression began &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/tariffs-the-taxes-that-made-america-great\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12427"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12431,"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427\/revisions\/12431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wasobamaborninkenya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}