Posted on 05/30/2025 1:23:03 PM PDT by Thank You Rush
Rhode Island was the first colony to foreswear allegiance to Great Britain on May 4, 1776, two months before the Declaration of Independence. It was also the only state not to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, fearing that a strong federal government, empowered to tax, would suppress smuggling. And it was the last state to ratify the Constitution on May 29, 1790, more than a year after the federal government had come into existence. It did so then only under the threat of having its exports taxed as if from a foreign nation.
(Excerpt) Read more at imprimis.hillsdale.edu ...
Their elected representatives appear today to be no more willing to join the majority of the country than those nearly 250 years ago..Look at their US Senators....
The constitution, as originally written, was very clear. It takes a Congress to foul it up.
Indeed now it’s all about greed
Thanks. A pretty good history and from a very good outfit - Imprimis - part of Hillsdale College.
An excellent treatise!
The author fails to mention the immense impact of the Morrill tariff that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in May of 1860.
The proposed bill would effectively raise tariff rates 30%, thus leading to massive damage to the Southern economy.
For seven months, Southern legislators fought the bill until it became a foregone conclusion that the bill would pass.
Seven Southern states seceded to form their own country to avoid financial ruin.
Immediately Lincoln launched an invasion to reverse separation.
It is clear that our costliest war was begun as a response to tariff manipulation.
Great! They have finally caught up - there was awhile there when they were a month of two behind in sending them out. I got a kick out of reading how out of touch Rhode Island was even that long ago..
Also for a couple of months in a row, mine and a friend’s whose name I had submitted were received in our mailboxes chewed up - unreadable. Maybe everything is back to normal again.
Enjoy.
That IS interesting and surprising that a writer - any writer - for Imprimis would overlook such history. Thanks.
Never too late or too old to find out there are other sides to history!
Sir Winston supposedly once said that, “History is written by the victors”.
Some say that Churchill’s comment is an oversimplification.
This article seems to validate him.
I had read this previously in my hard copy of Imprimus. Slightly biased against tariffs in general, but overall a good interesting history. Thanks for posting it.
My impression of the article is that it is a history of tariffs, not an argument, and in the end he concludes, “we will have to wait and see how it plays out.”
I don’t think he was advocating for or against tariffs so I’m not bothered that he might have left out something.
On the contrary, I see his presentation as being superficially historical while failing to point out the greatest tariff failure in U.S. history.
Why keep that hidden?
.
Quoting directly from the posted article:
“In 1928, presidential candidate Herbert Hoover promised farmers a protective tariff on farm products. But by the time Hoover became president and the bill was considered in Congress, the Wall Street crash had happened and the economy was moving into recession. What resulted was a feeding-frenzy of special interests. Industries and whole economic sectors alike sought protection in the slowing economy and Congress obliged. Even tombstone makers got a protective tariff.
The result, called the Smoot-Hawley Tariff after its principal sponsors in the Senate and House, was to raise the tariff on 20,000 imported commodities. It was the highest tariff in American history.
Economists were appalled and more than a thousand signed a petition asking Hoover to veto the bill. Thomas Lamont, a senior partner at J.P. Morgan and Company, wrote: “I almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot Tariff. That Act intensified nationalism all over the world.”
Lamont was right. Foreign countries quickly built their own tariff walls to unprecedented heights and world trade collapsed. In 1929, it had amounted to about $36 billion. By 1932, global trade was only $12 billion, one-third as much. American exports had been $5.241 billion in 1929. Three years later they were down to $1.161 billion, a 78 percent drop. In constant dollar terms, American exports were lower than they had been in 1896 when the economy had been one-fifth the size.
Congress’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff, the Federal Reserve’s keeping interest rates high in order to protect the gold standard, and the Hoover administration’s attempt to balance the budget in 1932 with sharply higher taxes, were the three huge public-policy mistakes that converted an ordinary stock market crash and recession into the Great Depression.”
And then the courts to back up Congress.
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