A look at the story shows that the United States has repeatedly experimented with high tariffs on imports since its foundation of the state to protect domestic industries. And it never went well. To the civil war, which began in 1861, the federal government played its budget for roughly 90 percent of tariffs. One main reason was not protectionism, but fiscal hardship. Customs income was easier to collect than taxes. Classic consumer taxes were also unpopular, as the so-called whiskey rebellion had revealed to politicians.1791 The congress had introduced a consumption tax on the sale of whiskey in order to build war debts and streets, post offices and military forts. Farmers in the West Pennsylvania refused to pay the tax and sparked an uprising that President George Washington had resigned. The Congress in 1828 – with an inch of 38 percent on finished goods and 45 percent on raw materials, made an uprising. The decision resulted in a state crisis. Great Britain and other European countries countered the tariffs by buying significantly less cotton and tobacco from the USA. South Carolina, whose cotton farmers were particularly affected, called for a cancellation of customs and threatened to leave the Union. President Andrew Jackson reached a compromise in 1833 after threatening South Carolina with war. However, the crack was hardly to be kept. Different trade interests separated the financial situation of the federal government north and south state, so that it began to invent new consumption taxes. The proportion of tariffs fell to the state revenue to still high 50 percent. The discrepancy between the north and south states revealed itself again in 1890. At that time, the influential congress member from Ohio, William McKinley, as chairman of the mighty “Ways and Means” committee, set an average of 49 percent to almost all imports. This corresponded to the line of the party. Gouvene from Ohio, later President of the United States: William McKinley on the election campaign tour in 1896 apblicans had good reasons: they came from America’s young industrial regions Ohio, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. The production locations suffered particularly from the competition from England, where the industrial revolution had previously started driving, says Douglas Irwin, business historian at Dartmouth University. Democratic politicians, on the other hand, represented the southern states that delivered cotton and tobacco all over the world and were therefore weighed with free trade. The consequences of the high tariffs were serious: Canada and Germany showed US agricultural goods with high tariffs as retaliation. The prices for textiles, sugar and other goods in the United States became more expensive because of the direct consequences of import duties and because American producers used the low foreign competition to increase prices. The tariffs also contributed to a financial crisis. The Republicans got the receipt in the next congress elections, and also a democrat replaced the Republican President. A customs phase fascinates Trump. Some American politicians speculated that the tariffs of Canada were starving so that the country would be voluntarily annexed. Instead, the country was looking for proximity to Great Britain. McKinley himself later distanced himself from the high tariffs because he saw that the American industry with rapidly growing production capacity relied on foreign markets that remained closed as long as the USA itself maintained high trade barriers. According to Irwin, however, this does not mean that the connection is causal. The business dynamics were more likely to go back to the huge wave of immigration. The service sector, which was not protected by tariffs, recorded growth inspiring productivity progress, says Irwin. External content Activated after a phase of low tariffs in 1930 the notorious Smoot Hewley Act came into force, which increased the tariffs to imports to 59 percent on average. It was a response to the stock market crash from 1929. The congress adopted an economic stimulus package and the ultra-protectorist Smoot-Hwley customs law, in assuming, the American industry could be isolated from global downturn. As the economic historian Phil Magness lists, a monstrous draft law was created as a result of the influence of countless industrial lobbyists who raised the tariffs to the highest level in the industrial age. America’s consumers, who already suffered from the downturn, beared the costs. In addition, according to Magness, American customs triggered a global trade war with retaliation abroad. According to Magness, worldwide trade broke down to a fraction of its 1929 level in the next three years. Ehuropa saw the tariffs as an hostile act of America. At that time, the United States was the largest creditor of debt that had accumulated as a result of the First World War. With the tariffs, they limited the possibilities of the countries that, according to Douglas Irwin, desperately tried to remove their debt load by exporter proceeds. Economists today agree that the global economic crisis at that time was triggered by failed monetary policy, but that the Smoot Hawley College had fueled the crisis that later contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War. The multilateral agreement had the purpose of “reducing the tariffs and other trade barriers significantly and abolishing the preferences on the basis of reciprocity and mutual benefits”. The United States reduced its tariffs from an average of 28 percent in 1900 to three percent and at the same time agreed free trade agreements that gave companies the security of making major investments, says business historian Andrew Greenland. With the imposition of tariffs to Mexican and Canadian imports, Trump violates the free trade agreement under his leadership and thus investment security. On April 2, he also draws a line under the agenda of the tariffs, which had brought up and prosperity to the post -war period. Trump speaks of the “day of liberation”. It’s a game with the fire.
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