Free Republic

id America’s Founding Fathers really embrace a nationalist economic program of tariffs and industrial subsidies? According to the “National Conservative” movement, such Founding Era luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison eventually abandoned their free-trade instincts and embraced a program of economic policies not unlike the NatCon agenda today. The American Compass website celebrates “Thomas Jefferson’s conversion to Hamiltonian supporter of domestic industry,” echoing Patrick Buchanan’s 2018 claim that “Tariffs Made America Great.” Most arguments in this genre point to Jefferson’s qualified commentaries on the Tariff of 1816 as evidence of this claim, while also noting the law was signed...