Opposition to protective tariffs was part of the original populist movement, which emerged during the Gilded Age as a response to massive levels of inequality, economic injustice and human suffering. It reached its electoral pinnacle in 1896 with the nomination of William Jennings Bryan — dubbed the “Great Commoner” — as the Democratic Party’s nominee.
The populists’ mission was to combat the political and economic power of the oligarchs and uplift the common people. To this end, their agenda included curbing monopoly power, introducing a graduated income tax, establishing an eight-hour workday, nationalizing the railroads and setting up a rural credit system. They opposed deflation engendered by the gold standard — which might have provided stability for financiers and industrialists, but hurt farmers, workers and debtors, who favored minting silver currency as well as gold to reflate the economy.
But while Bryan is best known for his “Cross of Gold” speech, populist politicians were also opposed to a protective tariff, which was an integral part of the Republican Party platform and a major source of revenue for the federal government. Bryan’s first major speech in Congress was delivered in opposition to a tariff, which he warned would raise costs for manufacturers and “press with accumulated weight upon the person who uses the finished product.”
Bryan rejected the argument that tariffs would lead to higher wages, but he did believe they would lead to cronyism and corruption. Not only did they increase prices for the common people and small businesses, he and other populists argued, but they boosted profits and further entrenched monopoly power among industrialists in the big cities. The face of these grievances was steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in history, who called in the Pinkertons — a private militia — to violently crush a strike at his Homestead mill. Populists linked his behavior to tariffs, arguing he refused to pass on the windfall he reaped from trade protections to his workers.
Facing William McKinley in 1896 — a Republican candidate financed massively by big business whom Trump has cited as a model for his trade policy — Bryan lost the election. It was a tough year to run as a Democrat, as the country was facing a deep economic recession under then-President Grover Cleveland. But part of the problem was that he appealed more to farmers crippled by debt and deflation than to industrial workers in rising trades. His staunch evangelical Protestantism also proved off-putting to many immigrants, including Irish and German Catholics.