John Griffin Carlisle Quotes
In the broad and sweeping sense which the use of the term generally implies, I am not a free-trader.
Barnes, James A. John G. Carlisle: Financial Statesman. Dodd, Mead & Company, 1931.
Democratic politicians of that era mostly opposed free trade because the experience ever since NAFTA showed that many manufacturing jobs were lost in the United States although many new jobs were created but few of these were good paying jobs that Americans with limited educations could perform as they were able to with manufacturing jobs. And during that period, the requirements for fair trade and foreign workers rights have been very poorly enforced. The Democrats split between those who thought that new trade treaties could be negotiated and enforced, correcting the problems of the past, and those who did not believe that such proper free trade was very likely.
In England at the time, the liberals were for free trade and the conservatives against. In both England and America both liberals and conservatives have flip flopped their roles in foreign trade several times. Free trade is a two edged sword; it aids domestic growth, employment and prosperity in some cases and hurts them on others. And there are always winners and losers for each example of free trade within any country. The result is no long term commitment and much flip flopping.
The U. S. was very protectionist in its early history. Grant overestimated the time that it would take for us to change by about 100 years.
Referring to NAFTA and free trade with Mexico:
John Griffin Carlisle was an American politician from the commonwealth of Kentucky and was a member of the Democratic Party. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives seven times, first in 1876, and served as Speaker of the House, from 1883 to 1889. He subsequently served as a U.S. senator from Kentucky, from 1890 to 1893, and then as Secretary of the Treasury, from 1893 to 1897, during the Panic of 1893. As a Bourbon Democrat he was a leader of the conservative, pro-business wing of the party, along with President Grover Cleveland.
