Matt Gaetz Quotes

A liberal economy doesn’t mean opening wide the doors for imports.

I am utterly opposed to anything which will alter the Free Trade character of this country.

Protectionism is the fool's gold of American politics.

The arguments for protection are more easily made attractive than those for free trade.

While protectionism doesn’t work, pure free trade doesn’t work either.

Free trade is hard to sell politically.

I love free trade, but we need great leadership to have real free trade. And we don't have good leadership. We have leadership that doesn't know what it's doing.

The trade is so easy for me. It's so obvious what's happening when our companies are flocking out. I am going to fix our trade, I am going to bring jobs back to America.

The United States can't keep a completely open system if the rest of the world is less open. The United States may have to take a leaf out of the book of Japan, China, and Germany, and have protectionism inside the system.

Before we move forward with new efforts to lower the barriers to international free trade, we must review the consequences of the policies of the past and address the problems of the present.

Thank God I am not a free-trader. In this country pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fibre.

The closest we can come to free trade is illuminating the barriers to free trade.

Tariffs! There are the politics of the future. Study them closely and make yourselves masters of them.

Unfair foreign trade practices are not isolated acts.

Demanding freedom of access to other markets isn't protectionism, it's free trade.

We need some economists to say that [trade] protectionism is not as dangerous as most economists seem to think it is.

Protectionism is a monster ... the essence of human injustice. It is the acme of human selfishness. It is one of the relics of barbarism.

… what is called free trade, foolishly by some and wickedly by others.

I am a tariff man standing on a tariff platform.

May our exports be so great, and our imports so small, that the balance of trade may be in our favor.

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

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

Free trade is always vulnerable to democratic politics.

Free trade is opposed by most people who call themselves “free traders”.

I know of but one principle to make a nation great … Protectionism and patriotism are reciprocal. This is the road that all great nations have trod.