I know what happened to the U.K. afterwards, but that can be ascribed more accurately to the enactment of the Welfare State. The U.K. rioters were not rioting because the U.K. eliminated tariffs: they were rioting because their entitlement mentalities, fed by decades of socialist propaganda, told them that they had the right to loot.
Fact is, free trade - from the geopolitical standpoint - is a way of buying friends and allies. The German customs union - the Zollverein - was forty years ahead of the German Empire being formed. You can see the same tendency in the E.U. right now: customs union, currency union, political union. Even if no political union results, free trade still brings nations closer together. That's why D.C. is full of free traders. They know that free trade, with America as the biggest market in the world, means that foreigners will be more well-disposed to America than otherwise.
Do you know what the view of NAFTA is amongst Canadian free-trade skeptics? They're convinced that:
a) the United States got the better of the deal, and took Canada for a ride;
b) the U.S.' secret aim is to buy up Canadian resources and water;
c) it's part of a secret plan to make Canada the "51st state" - i.e., for the United States to take Canada over entirely.
They're quite convinced that the U.S. got the better of the deal.
Why is Pat Buchanan considered part of the Right, again?
. Need tariffs, quotas on imported goods, NOW.
Also need to reduce regulations , taxes and reduce government and abolish unions.
China is growing at 10% per year and changing from a 3rd world country to an industrialized country. U.S. is in decline cause everything is made in China not here.
Trump was the only one that said anything about China or OPEC.
Herbert Hoover would disagree.
Buchanan is the only one that has figured this out. He is right.