These were the beginnings of the corrupt Government/Industrial complex that we are fighting today."
There are several points to make in response:
- The first US protective tariffs, in 1789 introduced by Pres. Washington and supported by Congressman James Madison, those had nothing to do with Chicago or DC.
- From Day One, those protective tariffs protected Southern products just as much as Northern.
For every dollar of import tariffs collected to protect Northern woolens and iron, there were equal dollars collected to protect Southern cotton and sugar. - It is absolutely not true that all manufacturing was in the North and all agriculture in the South.
In fact, for every Northern factory there were corresponding Southern works producing iron products, textiles, clothing, lumber, leather, booze and even woolens.
Yes, the Northern numbers were greater, but so was the North's population, and that alone accounts for a large portion of the differences.Point is, it wasn't only "The North" which benefitted from protective import tariffs, all US producers did, including Southern cotton, tobacco, sugar and manufacturing.
- The real problem with tariffs, as with any taxes:
- When tariffs were raised too high -- as in the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations" or the 1930 Smoot Hawley -- they could trigger major negative effects on global trade and the US economy.
- When tariffs were lowered too much -- as in the Democrats' Tariff of 1857 -- they reduced Federal revenues to the point of doubling the National Debt under Pres. Buchanan, from 1857 to 1860.
- Finally, your words "corrupt Government/Industrial complex" are meaningless nonsense, since all those words do is throw shade on something that has always existed and will always exist, regardless of how you describe it.
Just for starters, your word "corrupt" is a matter of legal definitions, and people who write our laws are never going to define themselves as "corrupt".