Replies

DoodleDawg said: I see. So when those goods were landed in New York they loaded them on wagons, sent them down I-95 to their ultimate destination down south?

There were these things called railroads. There were other things called canals and rivers. Then there was the coastwide trade whereby goods would be shipped to other ports once arriving in NYC or Boston etc and being subject to duties there. In any event, the end customers did not pay most of the cost of the tariff. The whole point of the protective tariff was to price foreign goods out of the market. Northern manufacturers could undercut foreign goods on price once foreign goods were subject to huge tariffs. The importer could not pass on most of the cost to customers in the form of higher prices. Their profit margins were squeezed severely as they were forced to eat most of the cost and they lost market share.

DoodleDawg said: Good went to the port closest to their intended customers. If the majority went to New York and Boston and Philadelphia then that's where the consumers were.

Not necessarily. See above. Goods arrived often in New York, paid the tariff and then were trans-shipped via railroad, via canals, via coastwide shipping to other ports.

DoodleDawg said: You have presented reams of opinion. Lincoln quoted government figures; what do your sources quote? Adams claims the south paid the lions share of tariffs yet in his book he doesn't provide a source for that claim. But what do you think? If the Union could only buy imports because the had Southern exports then how did the revenue climb so dramatically when those exports were cut off?

Adams provides sources and I provided several others. Its just inconvenient for you to admit it.

DoodleDawg said: Well if that's true then foreign shippers should be able to take their goods to any port they wanted since they weren't American goods. Were they?

Since coastwide trade had to be carried in American ships under the Navigation Acts, what tended to happen was that foreign ships arrived in NY, paid the tariff on their goods and the goods were then trans-shipped from NY being loaded onto the required American ships bound for other ports or the goods were loaded onto trains, sent on barges through the Erie Canal and onto the Great Lakes, etc etc

DoodleDawg said: I agree that the Northeast specialized in shipping. But what prevented U.S. shippers from bringing goods from London to Charleston, or London to New Orleans, if that was where the demand for those goods were?

it did not "prevent" it but with the distribution system centered on NY and to a lesser extent, Boston and Philadelphia......foreign ships tended to land at those ports quite frequently though New Orleans was also a major port.

DoodleDawg said: I think we've determined that. The tariff is paid by whoever ordered the goods and it's paid when those goods are landed. Tariffs have the effect of artificially inflating the cost of goods that consumers buy. All consumers, North and South. But what does that have to do with Southern demand for imports?

Just saying the customers were in the North (they weren't all by a longshot) does not mean those customers were bearing the cost of that tariff. They bore some costs as prices rose for manufactured goods, but the importer was obliged by the market to eat most of the cost which slashed profit margins. Meanwhile, profit margins for Northern manufacturers exploded as they were able to raise prices and still gain market share.

There were these things called railroads.

Railroads in the South were designed to get goods from the interior to port cities like Charleston, Mobile, and Savannah. There were no railroad lines connecting New York with the South.

There were other things called canals and rivers.

There were no canals linking the North with the South, and the only rivers were the Mississippi and the Ohio.

Then there was the coastwide trade whereby goods would be shipped to other ports once arriving in NYC or Boston etc and being subject to duties there.

So in your scenario all those massive amounts of imports, the vast majority of them according to you, were taken to New York and other Northern cities, landed, had their tariff applied and paid, loaded on other ships, and then taken South? And then those ships that brought them to the U.S., ships which could just as easily taken the goods directly to the customers in South Carolina or Georgia or New Orleans, then sailed south to load up with cotton and return to Europe? And we're the ones who are economically challenged?

Not necessarily. See above. Goods arrived often in New York, paid the tariff and then were trans-shipped via railroad, via canals, via coastwide shipping to other ports

See above. Why?

Adams provides sources and I provided several others. Its just inconvenient for you to admit it.

Sorry, I've got the book and Adams doesn't source his claim with a footnote. He just makes the claim.

Well sending through the Erie Canal is in the opposite direction of the South so your story is making less and less sense. But back the original question, which your scenario does not address. You want us to believe that the majority of imported goods which were destined for Southern consumers were taken to New York, unloaded, had the tariff applied, were loaded on other ships, and were then takes South. I ask again, why not take those goods directly to Southern ports since the ships had to go there to load with cotton anyway?

You keep going back to this mythical distribution system. If one did existed, and it didn't, why was it one way? Why didn't all those ships going South load with cotton, bring it back and export it through New York and Boston and Philadelphia? Wouldn't that double Yankee profits if they did?

Just saying the customers were in the North (they weren't all by a longshot) does not mean those customers were bearing the cost of that tariff.

No it doesn't. What means the customers were in the North is the fact that the goods were brought to ports closest to them and not ports far away from them. That's simple economics and good business sense, two things your scenario ignores.

FLT-bird: "Then there was the coastwide trade whereby goods would be shipped to other ports once arriving in NYC or Boston etc and being subject to duties there.
In any event, the end customers did not pay most of the cost of the tariff."

Seems to me this is the crux of the FLT-bird/DiogenesLamp economic argument -- that somehow it wasn't end-user customers who ultimately paid US import tariffs, but rather those cotton planters who exported to Europe.
F-b & DL tell us the exporter-planters paid tariffs, not the end-use import customers.

Of course that's nonsense because sales-taxes, even value-added taxes, are always paid ultimately by end-user customers.

FLT-bird: "The whole point of the protective tariff was to price foreign goods out of the market.
Northern manufacturers could undercut foreign goods on price once foreign goods were subject to huge tariffs."

Right, and there are political terms for that, you may have heard them?

"Put Americans first"

"Make America great"

You may be interested to notice that protecting manufacturing was indeed what the First Congress in 1789 intended with its first tariff.
Of course, that included manufacturing anywhere, not just in the North.

FLT-bird: "The importer could not pass on most of the cost to customers in the form of higher prices.
Their profit margins were squeezed severely as they were forced to eat most of the cost and they lost market share."

Exactly, that was the intention of our First Congress in passing its first tariff in 1789, the act signed into law by our first President, George Washington.
And nothing seriously changed from that day until the globalists took over a few decades ago.

FLT-bird: "Goods arrived often in New York, paid the tariff and then were trans-shipped via railroad, via canals, via coastwide shipping to other ports."

Right. Goods shipped to wherever end-use customers happened to be, very few of whom were Deep South cotton planters.

FLT-bird: "Since coastwide trade had to be carried in American ships under the Navigation Acts, what tended to happen was that foreign ships arrived in NY, paid the tariff on their goods and the goods were then trans-shipped from NY being loaded onto the required American ships bound for other ports or the goods were loaded onto trains, sent on barges through the Erie Canal and onto the Great Lakes, etc etc"

Right, and this tells me that FLT-bird does have some basic understandings of how things worked.
He understands that imports to New York shipped to end-use customers all over the country, including some in the South, but he wishes us to think import tariffs on those goods were somehow "paid for" by cotton planter exports.

FLT-bird: "with the distribution system centered on NY and to a lesser extent, Boston and Philadelphia......foreign ships tended to land at those ports quite frequently though New Orleans was also a major port."

Right, New Orleans was basically tied with Philadelphia as our third largest port.
About half of US cotton exported from New Orleans and returning ships brought huge volumes of imports for sale in the Deep South and the million-square-mile Mississippi River basin.

FLT-bird: "Just saying the customers were in the North (they weren't all by a longshot) does not mean those customers were bearing the cost of that tariff.
They bore some costs as prices rose for manufactured goods, but the importer was obliged by the market to eat most of the cost which slashed profit margins."

First, notice, when it suits FLT-bird he defines "the North" as everything north of South Carolina, but here it suits him to restrict "the North" to just New England.

Second, when you look at what, exactly, was being tariffed, you see all the major items, in descending dollars:

woolens from England
brown sugar from Caribbean
cotton from Europe
silks from China
iron from Europe
coffee from South America
molasses from Caribbean
flax from Europe
tea from China
wine from Europe

Note that some of these items were used as raw material in manufactured goods "exported" to the South.

My point is that tariffs on all these commodities were paid for by end-use customers, not Deep South cotton exporters.