Quotes about Tariff Protection

Ludwig von Mises

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of a consistent application of these doctrines.

Thorstein Veblen

A protective tariff is a typical conspiracy in restraint of trade.

Ambrose Bierce

TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.

John Floyd

At this moment came the direful struggle between the great parties in Congress founded upon the claim which the majority ... from the north of the Potomac made to the right to lay any tax upon the importations into the United States which was intended to act as a protection to northern manufacturers by excluding foreign fabrics of the same kind. Hence all the states to the south of the Potomac became dependent upon the Northern States for a supply of whatever thing they might want, and in this way the South was compelled to sell its products low and buy from the North all articles it needed from twenty-five to one hundred and twenty-five per cent higher than from France to England. .

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.

Warren G. Harding

The United States should adopt a protective tariff of such a character as will help the struggling industries of Europe to get on their feet.

Donald Trump

Our country was built, to a large extent, on protecting our manufacturers. If you go back to Jefferson, you go back to all of these great, great people that ran the United States properly, it was really based on a certain form of tariff and a certain form of protection. We're just the opposite now.

Milton Friedman

Business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of the
chief sources of danger....Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. We have to have that tariff to protect us against competition from abroad. We have to have that special provision in the tax code. We have to have that subsidy.

Eric Foner

Lincoln was a modernizer, so to speak. He believed in economic development. As a Whig before the war he favored what we would call infrastructure spending, government appropriation for canals, railroads, river and harbor improvements, and a tariff to protect industry. He believed in this market revolution that was sweeping across Northern society. He himself benefited from it in his own life.

William Howard Taft

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..

Murray Rothbard

The underconsumptionist of 1819 believed that consumption would be stimulated by tariffs, while the underconsumptionist of a later day urged monetary expansion as the remedy. On the other hand, the remedy proposed for the shortage of money capital was monetary inflation in 1819, encouragement of savings and thrift in the 1930s.

Roger Stone

As ambassador to China, Huntsman never publicly objected to Obama's trade policy, which allows China to take advantage of us - something that Donald Trump highlighted. Challenging Obama on China is one of the keys to beating him.

Abraham Lincoln

A protective tariff would be collected only from those whose pride, whose abundance of means, prompts them to spurn manufacturers of our own country ...

Warren G. Harding

I believe in the protective tariff and the protective tariff policy of our country.

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.

Tariff Protection Quotes