Abraham Lincoln Quotes

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

A form of protectionism should be enforced at national level, at least on strategic areas such as agriculture.

I never was a free-trader. I never felt that we could ... do away with all protective devices, because we would have been flooded with imports which would have hurt our economy.

Immediate restrictions must be introduced to drastically reduce imports. We waste millions of dollars on provocative imported commodities, like dog food, nuts, and ice cream.

Petitions poured in upon Congress urging the imposition of discriminating duties that should encourage the production of needed things at home.

For the past quarter of a century, the predominant idea, which has successfully asserted itself at the polls and shaped the course of the government, has been to preserve the home market for the home industries. The employer and the workman have alike been taught to look at the various economical measures proposed from this point of view, to regard with hostility any step favoring the intrusion of the foreign producer upon their own domain, and rather to demand increasingly rigorous measures of exclusion than to acquiesce in any loosening of the chain that binds the consumer to them.

I personally do not believe in protection mechanisms. It’s like a false friend. It makes you believe that you can compete, but you can’t compete and as the protection mechanisms fall away—the world is going for this—then you are in trouble.

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.

If the United States wants access to Chinese, Indian or Vietnamese markets, we must get access to theirs. U.S. protectionism is very subtle but it is very much there.

Protectionism has to be avoided. Protectionism is not only on goods but also in the area of services. Financial protectionism is also bad and should be avoided.

It was fairly obvious to anyone who studied the situation that China was dumping bedroom furniture in the U.S. to the detriment of our American workers and manufacturers to gain market access and share.

China must voluntarily cut back on exports to America otherwise American politics will become unmanageable.

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

Unfair foreign trade practices are not isolated acts.

From Abraham Lincoln in 1860 to Alf Landon in 1936, every Republican Presidential candidate ran on a platform endorsing high protective tariffs.

In 200 years when the United States will get all that it can from protectionism, it too will adopt free trade.

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

To protect our own great industries ... it is necessary to make some sacrifices.

The arguments of the protectionists in favor of creating home markets by protecting duties, operating to exclude the taxed foreign commodities, if addressed to the manufacturing and bountied States, would be impregnable. For these States pay but a small proportion of the costs, and enjoy nearly all the benefits of the home markets so created

After so many historical illustrations of the evil effects of abandoning the policy of protection for that of a revenue tariff, we are again confronted by the suggestion that the principle of protection shall be eliminated from our tariff legislation. Have we not had enough of such experiments?

The thing that we have to worry about is this protectionist movement that has reared its head again in this country

It cannot be denied that a state of great national prosperity is quite consistent and compatible with legislation in favor of the protection of native industry. That proposition, years ago, was denied; but with the experience we have had of France and the United States of America—the two most flourishing communities probably in existence—it is now incontestable.

Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all used temporarily targeted tariffs on specific industries.

Let's not pretend we're in a global free market when it comes to agriculture. Every country protects, for good reason, its agricultural industries.

The E.U., China, and Japan all talk free trade, and they all practice protectionism.