President McKinley's Pro-Tariff Speeches Took an America First Attitude Just Like President Trump's Speeches

William McKinley, Library of Congress

Tariffs are always popular, and they are always a bad idea. In the second of my posts about pro-tariff rhetoric, I travel back in time to look at pro-tariff speeches that future President William McKinley gave during his successful 1896 Front Porch Campaign. During this campaign, McKinley stayed home, while supportive crowds came to visit him. He gave each crowd a short, unique speech. Each speech stuck to the same two issues: the protective tariff and the gold standard. Although both issues are economic absurdities, they continue to win votes. 

Economists, liberal and conservative alike, know from centuries of research and experience that tariffs harm the economy. First, importers pass tariffs to their customers, causing prices to rise. Second, countries against whom we post tariffs will respond with their own tariffs, hurting our export businesses. Third, tariffs protect inefficient businesses from competition. Tariffs are, basically, a nasty kind of tax increase. In a Fox News column, economist John Cochrane gives an excellent explanation how tariffs hurt the economy.People who think that tariffs are good are, well, just plain wrong, and people who oppose free trade agreements are really, really wrong. Nevertheless, politicians do a powerful job of selling tariffs to the public.

Like his fellow Republican, President Trump, McKinley tied the protective tariff to patriotism. McKinley's campaign used America First themes long before President. Trump spread the idea. Here, for example, is what McKinley said during a Front Porch speech to a group of male workers (most of McKinley's audiences were all-male):

“Gentlemen, I have always been, as you know, in favor of a protective tariff. [Loud and continuous applause].” 

McKinley continued that this “great principle” also led him to “protect the laboring man of the United States against a degraded currency.” 

Early in the campaign a group of pro-McKinley women from Cleveland marched to McKinley's home in Canton, where a Mrs. Elroy M. Avery greeted McKinley with a speech of her own:

“We come from Cleveland; Cleveland, the beautiful; Cleveland that still lives; the queen city of the lower-lakes; the great heart of the western reserve that gave Giddings, Wade and Garfield to the nation.” 

She attacked the Democrats' free trade policies: she explained that Cleveland was “a city of great American industries that are suffering from un-American legislation.” This implied that the Democrats' low tariffs were not only wrong, but un-American. America First, indeed. 

In October 1896, McKinley told one visiting group that:

“There is no danger of a workingman ever becoming a slave if he has American wages [three tremendous cheers] the wages he had from 1860 to 1890, under the glorious policy of a protective tariff.”

See the trend? McKinley's rhetoric made the protective tariff, which was as silly an idea then as it is today, seem not only like a good policy, but positively patriotic. The tariff would guarantee "American wages." Not just good wages, but American wages. The protective tariff was a "glorious policy." 

Politicians easily make the protective tariff seem patriotic. The relatively small, specialized groups who benefit from the protective tariff, most of whom work in inefficient industries that can be better performed in other countries, obviously favor the tariff. When you put it that way, the tariff is revealed as an unwise special interest policy. When a candidate ties the tariff to patriotism, however – when the tariff becomes an "American policy," a "glorious policy," or, for President Trump, an "America First" policy – national pride can trick people into sabotaging their own needs and economic interests. This helps politicians like McKinley and Trump win elections while the nation suffers.

Also: 

From the Front Porch to the Front Page

1. My book From the Front Porch to the Front Page about the 1896 presidential campaign includes several chapters that discuss McKinley speeches favoring the gold standard and the protective tariff. I give more information about the speeches quoted in this post, as well as many other 1896 tariff speeches. Interested readers can find the book in online bookstores and many large libraries. 

2. In a recent column, conservative economist Greg Mankiw gives a simple, snappy explanation why trade deficits are not harmful. Anyone who thinks that tariffs and restricted trade are good should read his column.  

3. The day before he was assassinated, President McKinley gave an important speech in Buffalo, New York in which he changed his views and favored free trade throughout the Western Hemisphere. That proves that even a doctrinaire politician can learn something. I talked about this speech in a book chapter about McKinley's speaking career.

4. You can read my earlier blog post about tariff speeches here.
5. Why do voters choose candidates whose policies will surely hurt them? Bryan Caplan's book The Myth of the Rational Voter is worth a look.

It seems that, when it comes to economics and politics, there really is nothing new under the sun.