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To: BroJoeK
And "the South" effectively spent all its foreign exchange earnings in the North.

For any northern goods whose prices had been raised because the tariff protected them from cheaper and in some cases probably better quality foreign goods, the South was effectively paying the tariff to the makers of those Northern goods.

746 posted on 01/26/2019 9:18:00 AM PST by rustbucket
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To: rustbucket; DiogenesLamp; FLT-bird; rockrr; x
rustbucket: "For any northern goods whose prices had been raised because the tariff protected them from cheaper and in some cases probably better quality foreign goods, the South was effectively paying the tariff to the makers of those Northern goods."

Sure, but that's not what we've seen from posters like DiogenesLamp or FLT-bird.
Instead they want to make the Southern "paid for" more direct, as if somehow Southern planters themselves "paid" the Union tariffs.
They didn't.

However, interestingly enough, there are numbers available which can show which manufactured commodities "exported" by "the North" to "the South" included at least some foreign raw materials.
Those would be European woolens and pig iron, plus Chinese silk and tea. It's hard to imagine a value added to imported tea, but woolens & silk could be made into clothing, and pig iron into any number of metal products.
If we suppose the average value added in the North was 50% before resale in the South, then the total import cost of woolens, pig iron, silk and tea shipped South would be about 10% of total imports.

Thus we see that about 8% of US imports landed directly in Confederate state ports, mainly New Orleans, plus another ~10% landed in "Northern" ports for manufacture and resale to the South.
In sum, of all US imports about 20% ended up in "the South", which roughly corresponds to the South's contribution to total US GDP -- See calculations here.

Bottom line: there are no numbers anywhere which honestly justify claims "the South" "paid for" 75% or 85%, or anything remotely close to it, of Federal import tariffs.
20% is the more reasonable number.

747 posted on 01/26/2019 12:35:59 PM PST by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: rustbucket
For any northern goods whose prices had been raised because the tariff protected them from cheaper and in some cases probably better quality foreign goods, the South was effectively paying the tariff to the makers of those Northern goods.

Wouldn't Northern consumers of those goods be paying the tariff as well?

749 posted on 01/26/2019 1:08:28 PM PST by DoodleDawg
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To: rustbucket
rustbucket: For any northern goods whose prices had been raised because the tariff protected them from cheaper and in some cases probably better quality foreign goods, the South was effectively paying the tariff to the makers of those Northern goods.

Yep. Due to domestic competitors, importers could not simply raise their prices by the amount of the increased tariff. They were forced to pay most of it themselves. Northern manufacturers could both raise prices and at the same time still gain market share by undercutting foreign imports. Great deal if you're a northern manufacturer. Not that bad of a deal if you stood to get a job at one of those Northern factories even if you as a consumer were paying more for manufactured goods. Absolutely terrible if you were a consumer and your area did not have very many factories but was producing a lot of cash crops for export. That last description fits much of the Deep South of course.

762 posted on 01/28/2019 12:08:19 PM PST by FLT-bird
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