When economic patriotism died

World Net Daily ^ | 5/02/2013 | Buchanan, Patrick

[ek_hornbeck]

When Pat Buchanan says “economic patriotism,” he really means “national socialism.”

That's right, only notorious Nazis like William Taft, Teddy Roosevelt, William McKinley, Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, John Adams, and George Washington supported tariffs.

[ek_hornbeck]

I haven't read through this thread in its entirety yet, but I'm willing to bet that the "tariffs caused the Great Depression" line (which even free traders like Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan admit was a myth) has been repeated more than a few times.

Historical facts speak more loudly than any theories, and the claim that tariffs are bad for our economy is scuttled by the fact that the US had its highest growth rates and greatest industrial development when tariffs were high and other forms of taxation were low or non-existent. Now, correlation doesn't prove causation here, but it does prove that tariffs are a less onerous economic burden than other forms of government revenue.