How Tariffs Promote & Preserve Small Government

Daily Caller ^ | September 18, 2019 | Spencer P Morrison

[Thalean]

George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt. When you hear their names what comes to mind? The White House? Possibly. Mount Rushmore? Probably. How blasé.

What ought to come to mind are tariffs. Yes, tariffs.

Despite the mainstream media’s copious efforts to cast President Trump and those who support tariffs as economically illiterate at best — and as wannabe-Stalinists at worst — in reality most of America’s Founding Fathers and former presidents favored tariffs. In fact, America’s first major piece of legislation was the Tariff Act of 1789. Why?

Tariffs are the form of taxation most consistent with the principles of small government.

There are three main reasons for this. First, tariffs increase the demand for domestic labor, thereby creating jobs and boosting wages for American workers. Second, people with jobs are less likely to vote for big government. Third, economic integration inevitably erodes national sovereignty.

[walkingdead]

Great article. Enough there to get the juices flowing for those less aware of the history of our country and tariffs, as well as enough to get the more up to speed people researching just how tariffs worked in the past and why they were essential to the growth of our nation.

All this free trade nonsense needs to stop. In no way shape or form is it a conservative ideal. For some strange reason, tons of conservatives bought into the lie that free trade was good because government was out of it. All it did was allow our industry to move to places where those governments allowed advantage over America.

I always wondered why conservatives bought into this theory, glad to see some finally talking about why it is fundamentally flawed (should have been evident to begin with).