John C. Calhoun Quotes
High duties have no pernicious effects and are consistent with the genius of the people and the institutions of the country.
John C. Calhoun, 1782-1850, Vice President of the United States (Democrat, SC), U. S. Congressman & Senator (Democrat, SC), Congressional Debate, December 4, 1812
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
At that period of American History, the Republicans supported high tariffs and protectionism for American companies and it was the Democrats who were the advocates of free trade. Later each of the parties would flip flop their positions and then say that they were advocating their traditional principles.
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.
In this case the tariffs were imposed not to protect national industries but to simply raise revenue. In the early years of the United States, almost all of the Federal Revenue was raised this way.
This quotation is of interest because it shows that the switching of positions by the two dominant parties on protectionism and free trade was not just an American phenomenon. Like the United States, the English conservatives on the right were for strong protectionist measures, while the left was for free trade. By the beginning of the 21st century the parties flip flopped both in the U. S. and in England.
This notion of state owned industries where the profits can pay for some of the costs of operating a government. In modern cases like China, Egypt and Indonesia, the military owned industries the profits of which defrayed the general budget burden. The problem however, has always been that the government tends to give preference to government owned industries in purchases and the lack of competition generally produces inefficient companies over time.
Most Republicans at the time were beholden to corporations and business who then demanded high tariffs and other protectionisms so they could maintain high prices and not have to compete with British and European imports. Roosevelt and a few other reform Republicans were free traders along with most Democrats. Roosevelt had so many other reforms in the fire that he decided not to take this one on at the same time and thought that the benefit would not be good enough for the nation to offset the open civil war of the Republican Party that would ensue. In the latter half of the 20th century, large American companies had opened or invested in foreign corporations and/or were manufacturing many of their products abroad. So they then advocated free trade. When they did, the Republican Party flip flopped and adopted free trade as one of its basic principles. Meanwhile, the Democrats who were free traders in the early 20th Century had become protectionists by the end of the 20th century as labor movement wanted to protect American jobs.
It was a classic economic protectionist practice to for an imperial nation to sell manufactured goods to its colonies, but not to allow the colonies to sell high labor value goods back to the mother country. The early American colonies were victims of this, and Brandgee was the leader of the protectionist wing of the Republican party. See {640519} for William Howard Taft’s opinion of him.
John Caldwell Calhoun was an American politician and political theorist from South Carolina who held many important positions including being the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832, while adamantly defending slavery and protecting the interests of the white South when its residents were outnumbered by Northerners. He began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs. He saw Northern acceptance of those policies as a condition of the South remaining in the Union. His beliefs and warnings heavily influenced the South's secession from the Union in 1860–1861.
