John F. Manley Quotes

A key U.S. initiative in this trade war must be to develop reliable trading partners in the world.

China has concluded that trade trumps all.

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

Foreign trade can no longer be dealt with apart from other domestic economic policies and concerns. Governments often employ trade policies less for commercial ends than to achieve other goals- economic, political, and social.

More and more we must build our foreign policy around commerce.

Free tariff or no tariff would close up our manufactories by the scores.

Nothing has ever been made plainer at a general election than that the controlling principle in the raising of revenue from duties on imports is zealous care for American interests and American labor. The people have declared that such legislation should be had as will give ample protection and encouragement to the industries and the development of our country.

The prosperity created at home and overseas by free expansion [of foreign trade] was infinitely greater than could be coaxed by restrictive mercantilism.

Manufacturing value chains are global. Many U.S.-made goods have foreign components. Slapping on tariffs will raise prices and slow imports, but it will make us poorer and impede growth.

America is becoming more and more dependent upon imports from foreign manufacturers than we are exports from our country in all fields: in appliances, in clothing, even food. This year America may become for the first time in its history a net food importer.

I have long been a vocal advocate of reciprocal free trade though that position did not endear me to my own political party. And I continue to strongly believe in free and fair international trade.

We cannot open our markets to countries that do not open their markets to us.

We have little of no inflation in manufacturing goods because more and more we buy products from abroad at very cheap prices.

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down.

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

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.

The best way to help countries around the world is to help them with trade.

Of what do we complain? A total incapacity, produced by the foreign policy, to purchase, at any price, necessary foreign objects of consumption.

America has a right to demand that the world’s markets are open to our products …

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

Foreign policy today is economics.

Our nation has moved from the cold war to the trade war.

[We must] teach the advocates for an open trade the folly as well as degradation of their policy.

There has always been a temptation, at times of economic difficulty, to turn inward and put up the shutters. That is when we need free trade most.

I am a tariff man standing on a tariff platform.