Obviusly economics was not your forte or your minor. Import tariffs protect American industry - not consumers. Tariffs allow American industries to charge more for their own goods, and also reduce competetion. If a US widget costs (retail) $1.50, and that from overseas $1.25, a 47% import tariff raises the price of the foreign widget to $1.84. As long as the tariff is in place, it allows American widgets to sell domestically at a level of $1.50 - $1.84. And if the foreign product is superior to the American, the foreign widgets will still be purchased for a very good reason.
Secondly, retalitory tariffs are often imposed by foreign governments, making American exports more expensive. Thus the American exporters experience a reduction in profits and volume. Tariffs only benefit the industry they protect - all others pay for their subsidization.
Most Americans have no problem supporting/purchasing American products, just don't rob them in the process.
March 2, 1861, the Morrill Tariff was signed into law by outgoing President Buchanan.
Just after the Congressional seats were vacated in 1861 by the Southern congressmen, the economic order of the United States was dramatically changed. The tariff took off on an upward trajectory that was far above any tariff in history.
This tariff raised the taxation rate from an average of approximately 15%(current rate) to 37.5% with a greatly expanded list of covered items. This effectively tripled the taxation rate on imported goods. The law later allowed a second additional rate averaging 47% for iron.
This was a major change in taxation. Having evolved from the low taxation rates of the early 1800’s, voters in certain sections of the country were in favor of higher tariffs to protect their manufacturing industries. Southerners, whose income came from agriculture, of course demanded low tariffs. They preferred buying European products, which were better and cheaper than those made in the United States.
Westerners, whose income also came from agriculture, at first opposed high tariffs. But they came to accept the “American System” proposed by Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky, and advocated by both Lincoln and the Republican party. In 1824, Congress had boosted most tariffs as a result of Clay’s proposals.
Many people, especially Southerners protested the rising tariffs in 1828. Subsequent negotiations in the US Congress caused the tariffs to rise and fall intermittently during the 1840’s and 1850’s.
Since the agricultural South needed more imported goods than the industrial North, the tariff highly affected the South while benefiting the manufacturing interests in the North. Most of the discretionary Federal spending was on Northern projects and infrastructure that did not encourage industrial development in the South.
When Morrill’s tax plan was introduced into debate in Congress in 1860, the Southerners felt betrayed when the West and North joined in support of the high tariffs.
Earlier in the year, the New Haven Daily Register said,
“There was never a more ill-timed, injudicious and destructive measure proposed, than the Morrill tariff bill, because while Congress is raising the duties for the Northern ports, the Southern Constitutional Convention is doing away with all import duties for the Southern ports, leaving more than three-fifths of the seafront of the Atlantic States…beyond the reach of our tariff…Southern ports would then invite the free trade of the world.”
The editor advised that the South be left alone, and the Morrill tariff be repealed.
3/2/1861 The New York Evening Post stated: “That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources, which supply our treasury, will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe.
There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.”