William Howard Taft Quotes
Unless I am presented with evidence that the producers of oil, coal or hides were unable to compete successfully without reduction of wages, then they do not need a duty and their articles should go on the free list..
William Howard Taft, 1857-1930, 27th President of the United States (Republican, OH) Advocating the reduction of the then existing protective tariffs, July 16, 1909
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Hoover, a brilliant administrator, seems to have been on the wrong side of most economic issues.
The issue of free trade verses protectionism has been with us throughout American history with national sentiments going one way and then later the other, only to come back and the cycle has gone on. Floyd was very modern in his economic views, so much so that he, even as a Southern politician, opposed slavery on the grounds that it was economically inefficient and the South would never develop industrially if it had no incentive, as existed in the North and England, to reduce the amount of labor required for economic opportunity. He was right on that point as well.
At that period of American History, the Republicans supported high tariffs and protectionism for American companies and it was the Democrats who were the advocates of free trade. Later each of the parties would flip flop their positions and then say that they were advocating their traditional principles.
The same problem has always existed with full scale trade wars always a possibility.
5th Earl of Rosebery. With free trade, there are winners and losers. The advocates observe that overall, there is a great benefit to most countries engaging in free trade, but some sectors of the economy, and some areas and groups of people fare poorly.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Republicans at that time were adamant protectionists and were violently opposed to free trade. They made a total flip flop on free trade after the Second Word War when the industrial capacity of all of the major industrial nations except America was completely emaciated. America still had production and there was huge money to be made from being the only nation that could deliver goods to the world. Meanwhile Germany, France, England, and Italy, our largest competitors could hardly manufacture for their own needs and could not compete in the American market. So the American corporations then wanted to become free traders.
There has always been pressure from different interests to exempt certain products from duty and place higher duties on others. Calhoun urged a policy that would be based on general economic prinicples and conditions and not on pressure from special vested interests. He was a senator at the time.
Most Republicans at the time were beholden to corporations and business who then demanded high tariffs and other protectionisms so they could maintain high prices and not have to compete with British and European imports. Roosevelt and a few other reform Republicans were free traders along with most Democrats. Roosevelt had so many other reforms in the fire that he decided not to take this one on at the same time and thought that the benefit would not be good enough for the nation to offset the open civil war of the Republican Party that would ensue. In the latter half of the 20th century, large American companies had opened or invested in foreign corporations and/or were manufacturing many of their products abroad. So they then advocated free trade. When they did, the Republican Party flip flopped and adopted free trade as one of its basic principles. Meanwhile, the Democrats who were free traders in the early 20th Century had become protectionists by the end of the 20th century as labor movement wanted to protect American jobs.
William Howard Taft was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for reelection by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to be chief justice, a position he held until a month before his death.
