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U.S Custom House.

Lessons from Early America’s Tariff Wars

The 1790s debate shows that, even when they aim at moral goods, tariffs abet cronyism and corruption.
by John C. Pinheiro via Law & Liberty on April 23, 2025
A political cartoon of Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland emptying the U.S. treasury.

Radical Tariffs Aren’t New, But They Have Been Disastrous

An American story.
by Scott Reynolds Nelson via Perspectives on History on April 14, 2025
Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan

American Populists Used to Run Against Tariffs. It Could Happen Again.

William Jennings Bryan stoked a worker revolt against protectionism that led to the first income tax.
by Tony Annett via Washington Post on April 9, 2025
Political cartoon showing a dog named 'income tax' running from a can called "supreme court decisions."

No, President Trump, the Income Tax Wasn’t A Mistake. But It Was an Accident.

Trump claimed that the income tax was passed for “reasons unknown to mankind” and caused the Great Depression. Here’s the real history.
by Jesse Eisinger via ProPublica on April 8, 2025
Thousands of shipping containers at the terminal at Port Elizabeth, New Jersey.

No Tariffs Without Representation

Executive trade power has gone too far.
by Erik Matson via Law & Liberty on March 19, 2025
William McKinley making a campaign speech in 1896.

Why Trump Admires President McKinley, the Original ‘Tariff Man’

President Donald Trump says McKinley made the United States prosperous through tariffs. Historians say that’s an incomplete understanding of the 25th president.
by Andrew Jeong via Retropolis on January 27, 2025
Trump holding a table of tariff rates.
partner

Tariffs Don’t Have to Make Economic Sense to Appeal to Trump Voters

Economists and Democrats dismiss Trump’s tariffs talk at their peril.
by Bruce J. Schulman via Made By History on October 24, 2024
Trump displaying a table of reciprocal tariffs.
partner

The Dangers of President Trump’s Favorite Word — Reciprocity

The Gilded Age roots of Trump's trade philosophy.
by Marc-William Palen via Made By History on November 5, 2019
partner

The Truth About Trade Wars: Everyone Loses, and the Damage Is Hard To Undo

President Trump is repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression.
by Sebastian Edwards via Made By History on June 6, 2018

Taft and Trump

Much more than time separates the 27th president from the 45th.
by Jeffrey Rosen via The Atlantic on March 19, 2018

America’s Tumultuous History With Tariffs

From William McKinley to Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump has plenty of precedent if he's looking for it.
by Robert W. Merry via The American Conservative on March 6, 2018

'Trade Wars Are Good'?

Three past conflicts tell a very different story.
by Marc-William Palen via The Conversation on March 5, 2018

Congress Handed to the President the Power to Level Tariffs

A republic needs a legislature that can handle such tasks. We don’t have one.
by Jay Cost via National Review on March 5, 2018
partner

Tax Season and the Making of the American Fiscal State

As Americans file their taxes this tax season, the Trump administration threatens to unravel the modern fiscal state.
by John Fabian Witt, Ajay K. Mehrotra via Made By History on April 16, 2025
A bread line on New York's Lower East Side in 1930.

Trump Tariffs Conjure Specter of Smoot-Hawley Act, a Depression-Era Blunder

The 1930 tariff bill hurt exporters and provoked other countries to enact their own tariffs as the U.S. economy grappled with the Great Depression.
by Andrew Jeong via Washington Post on April 8, 2025
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Free Trader

A little understood part of the New Deal.
by John Ganz via Unpopular Front on April 4, 2025
Donald Trump at a formal event.

Trump’s Imperial Fantasy: To Be Polk, McKinley, and Putin—All at Once

Trampling rights, imposing tariffs, gobbling up others’ territories. Trump is imitating his role models to a T.
by Thom Hartmann via The New Republic on March 17, 2025
Henry Carey.

The Thinker Who Explains Trump’s Tariffs

Henry Charles Carey is arguably the most influential economist in American history.
by Adam Rowe via Compact on March 4, 2025
"Made in U.S.A." sticker

The Return of Political Economic Nationalism

The populist turn in our politics is best understood as a revival of old categories of political economy.
by Matt Wolfson via Law & Liberty on February 25, 2025
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, flanked by the U.S. and Chinese flags.

Back to the ’80s?

Trump, Xi Jinping, and the tariffs.
by Andrew Liu via n+1 on January 30, 2025

The Historical Roots of Donald Trump’s Aggressive Nationalism

What the President’s confrontations with Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Colombia suggest about his expansionist vision.
by Greg Grandin, Isaac Chotiner via The New Yorker on January 28, 2025
Grover Cleveland.

The President Trump Is Pushing Aside

Grover Cleveland enthusiasts aren’t thrilled that Donald Trump won a nonconsecutive presidential term.
by Russell Berman via The Atlantic on January 1, 2025
Photo of Grover Cleveland and then a photo of Donald Trump next to each other.
partner

Will Grover Cleveland's Second Term Foreshadow Trump's Future?

The only president before Trump to win, lose, and win again ended up decimating his own party during his second term.
by Luke Voyles via Made By History on November 21, 2024
Donald Trump at a podium

The New Trumpian Bargain

Trump's second term echoes 19th-century policies: tariffs and immigration limits protect workers, while deregulation risks widening inequality.
by Sohrab Ahmari via New Statesman on November 12, 2024
Shipping container labeled "China Shipping," overlaid on political cartoon showing a tariff slowing supply of medicine to a drip.

Trump Loves The 1890s But He’s Clueless About Them

The tariffs he keeps babbling about didn’t make that decade great. They helped usher in a depression.
by Eric Rauchway via The Bulwark on October 23, 2024
Donald Trump

Donald Trump Would Be Weaker the Second Time Around

Donald Trump wants the ideology of William McKinley and Gilded Age Republicanism, but with a totally different social base. It won’t work.
by Paul Heidman via Jacobin on October 23, 2024
John Sherman
partner

The Other Sherman’s March

How the younger brother of the famous general set out to destroy the scourge of monopoly power.
by Richard R. John via HNN on October 22, 2024
President Bill Clinton signing NAFTA

The Long Shadow of NAFTA

Neither side of the border has seen the benefits it was promised.
by Helen Andrews via The American Conservative on February 12, 2024
The cover of "Sectionalism and American Political Development: 1880-1980"

Sectional Industrialization

Political scientist Richard Bensel explains the feedback loops between policy commitments of political elites and the regional distribution of political power.
by Justin H. Vassallo, Richard Franklin Bensel via Phenomenal World on January 7, 2023
Black-and-white illustration of men using several of Thomas Edison's inventions

A Dose of Rational Optimism

"Slouching Towards Utopia" is a rise-and-fall epic—but it is better at depicting the rise than explaining the fall.
by Zachary D. Carter via Dissent on October 7, 2022
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