After the slavery issue, no political dispute shaped nineteenth-century American politics (at least the first half of the century) more than the question regarding the rate of tariffs on imported goods. Under the Constitution, Congress has the exclusive authority to levy tariffs on all goods imported into the United States. In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the tariff issue gradually became enmeshed in a sectional conflict that seriously complicated the process of building national political coalitions. Throughout this period, the strongest opposition to protective goods came from the Deep South, where the agrarian economy benefited from low duties on raw materials exported to other nations (particularly cotton). In the industrial North, however, steep tariffs were viewed as a necessary protection from competition from cheap goods manufactured overseas.
In the candidate-saturated Campaign of 1824, four of the five presidential candidates had supported protective tariffs in some form. The Campaign of 1828 was also marked by a debate over tariffs (as well as controversies surrounding the outcome of the previous election). Tariffs again emerged as a hot issue in the Campaign of 1832. South Carolina had, at one point, threatened to secede from the Union over the Tariff of Abominations, claiming that the state had a right of nullification for any federal legislation that it objected to.
Slavery dominated the political debate throughout the 1840s and 1850s, and although tariffs remained controversial, they were overshadowed by the lead-up to the Civil War. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, the Republican Party, with its base in the manufacturing centers of the Northeast and Midwest, remained a strong advocate of tariffs; while the Democratic Party, representing the more agrarian areas of the South, fought hard to limit tariffs to promote agricultural products. In response to the economic crises of the early 1890s, Republican nominee William McKinley ran on a platform of tariffs and sound money in the Campaign of 1896. His opponent, the populist-minded Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan, opposed tariffs and wanted to make credit more available by the unlimited coining of silver currency.
After the election of Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson in the Campaign of 1912, the tariffs rate on foreign imports plunged to a hundred-year low, only to rise again eight years later after Republicans regained control of Congress and the White House. Harding and the Republicans blamed the flagging economy in the aftermath of World War I on low tariffs, while Democrats argued that enacting new tariffs would hurt worldwide demand for U.S. goods. President Harding signed the Emergency Tariff Act in 1921 and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff in 1922. The purpose of the Emergency Tariff Act was to protect U.S. wheat farmers from low-priced Canadian wheat imports; Fordney-McCumber created a Tariff Commission and gave the president sweeping new powers to raise or lower tariff rates as he saw fit. All but a handful of Democratic legislators opposed the bill, and all but a handful of Republican legislators supported it. Nations around the world retaliated by hiking tariffs on U.S. goods, including products such as automobiles. Nevertheless, after the Campaign of 1924, Republican Herbert Hoover maintained the U.S. commitment to high tariffs, signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised U.S. tariffs to record levels. Smoot-Hawley was opposed by large numbers of economists, the automobile industry, the banking industry, and other manufacturers who by now were seeking global markets for their goods. While imported goods sold in the United States declined, unemployment continued to surge.
In the Campaign of 1932, Democratic nominee Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaigned against Smoot-Hawley, and quickly sought to dismantle the tariffs after being elected (Smoot and Hawley had both been defeated in their reelection bids that same year), and to establish a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements with other countries as a means of resolving trade disputes. Roosevelt signed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, giving him the authority to negotiate bilateral trade agreements with other nations. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed in 1947, and represented a commitment by many of the world’s developed and developing nations to lower tariffs and other barriers to international trade. GATT was replaced in 1995 by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
While the United States has had a bipartisan commitment (among party leaders) to an international free trade regime, the country’s long history of protectionism is still in evidence. In the early 1980s, the U.S. economy was in a tailspin, due in part to rising energy prices coupled with rising unemployment. The situation was particularly grim for American automakers, who found themselves losing market share to lower-priced, more fuel-efficient vehicles imported from Japan. Autoworkers were laid off in droves, and voters directed their anger at Japan. In the summer of 1982, two Detroit autoworkers beat twenty-seven-year-old Vincent Chin to death with a baseball bat outside of a McDonald’s on the outskirts of the city. Chin was Chinese American, but his attackers had mistaken him for Japanese, taking out their economic frustrations on their hapless and confused victim. Chin’s attackers were charged only with manslaughter and served no jail time, triggering outrage in the Asian American community. They were charged with federal civil rights violations two years later and were eventually cleared, although they were convicted in civil court.
In this perilous political climate, President Ronald Reagan sought to appease irate American autoworkers while still maintaining the appearance of a commitment to free trade. He called on Japanese auto producers to submit to voluntary import quotas, hinting that more drastic actions might be taken if Japanese auto exports to the United States continued to rise. Japan acquiesced, and Honda and Toyota soon began to build their own plants in the United States (called “transplants” at that time) to avoid potential import restrictions. With American workers being hired to assemble Japanese automobiles, they reasoned, they would not only be able to avoid any potential import quotas, but they could also argue that they were contributing to American economic growth. The strategy worked; as more Americans took jobs with foreign automakers, the line between American and foreign automobiles began to blur.
The next appearance of a trade issue in a presidential election was in the Campaign of 1992. The first major point of contention between the presidential candidates was over incumbent President George H. W. Bush’s decision to renew the country’s most-favored-nation (MFN) trading status with China. Democratic nominee Bill Clinton’s running mate, Al Gore, argued that China’s brutal crackdown on the peaceful demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 should have been a factor in deciding whether to once again grant China the status of a privileged trading partner. Gore would also make this argument in the Campaign of 2000, when he was the Democratic nominee.
Also at issue in the Campaign of 1992 was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), negotiated by the incumbent Bush administration, which was to create a free-trade zone between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA had not yet been ratified by the Senate, and it was overwhelmingly unpopular in manufacturing states such as Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. American workers had already begun to see job losses in the manufacturing sector as businesses relocated south of the border in an attempt to lower their labor costs, a trend that was poignantly captured by filmmaker Michael Moore in Roger & Me, a documentary about the demise of General Motors in his hometown of Flint. Independent candidate H. Ross Perot made NAFTA the centerpiece of his campaign, arguing that ratification of NAFTA would accelerate the flow of jobs to Mexico, such that Americans would hear “a giant sucking sound” as jobs and tax revenue disappeared across the border. Republican Pat Buchanan also joined the race, challenging Bush in the Republican primaries on the basis of both Bush’s violation of his “no new taxes” pledge of four years earlier, and Bush’s support of NAFTA.
Bush defended NAFTA, arguing that in the long run, it would help to create jobs in the United States. By this point, the Republican Party had become the standard-bearer for free trade, a complete about-face when compared to its electoral history. The Democrats, on the other hand, maintained a strong base of blue-collar workers and, as a consequence, sought to protect American jobs from outsourcing, overseas competition, and relocation of manufacturing industries to other locations. NAFTA was fast-tracked to passage during the last months of the elder Bush Administration, and supported, with modification, by his successor, President Bill Clinton, with the full approval of First Lady and future presidential candidate (2008 and 2016), Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton would eventually come to oppose NAFTA following her election to the United States Senate upon her departure from the White House, and she has devoted some energy throughout her political career since then to distancing herself from the principles behind NAFTA, conceding in her 2008 campaign that the pact had “had hurt a lot of American workers,” an admission that was exploited by her 2008 rival, Senator Barack Obama, as an example of rhetorical flip-flopping.
The trade issue was again raised during the first few months of the 2015/2016 campaign as candidates considered a new and broader trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), negotiated by the Obama Administration. In early October 2015, Democratic candidate and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton went on the record against TPP even though she had supported it while serving as President Obama’s secretary of state. In so doing, former Sec. Clinton publicly opposed President Obama’s effort to obtain approval for the new multinational trade arrangement. Her Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, has also criticized TPP. Republican candidates have been more divided on the issue, with Gov. Jeb Bush more consistently supportive of the arrangement. TPP has received its harshest criticism from the extreme ends of the political spectrum.
The parties continue to differ on this issue, although tariffs and trade are rarely an issue at election time. The Republican Party platform continues to advocate free trade without restrictions, whereas the Democrats support “fair trade,” which makes trade relations subject to human rights considerations, working conditions and fair pay for labor, and environmental safeguards. Notably, while the political leadership of both parties has exhibited a strong preference for free trade in recent decades, the public in general is far more skeptical. The public has generally been considerably more willing than political leaders to make trade contingent on fair wages, job protection, and environmental quality standards.
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Krugman, Paul. “A Tariff History of the United States.” New York Times, November 7, 2009.
Merica, Dan, and Eric Bradner. “Hillary Clinton Comes Out against TPP Trade Deal.” CNN Politics, October 7, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/politics/hillary-clinton-opposes-tpp/index.html.
Perot, Ross, with Pat Choate. Save Your Job, Save Our Country: Why NAFTA Must Be Stopped Now. New York: Hyperion, 1993.
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