Cheap imports allow for cost savings so the money otherwise spent on expensive domestic goods could be made elsewhere.
We tried raising tariffs to protect local businesses and consumers in the 1930s and all we got was a lousy world war.
The only time broad tariffs genuinely worked in America's interests was under Jefferson, when his devastating tariff hikes jump-started the industrial economy.
I'm no history expert, but I think it's fair to say that a solution for a pre-industrial backwater might not work as well when it comes to a (then unimaginable) technological, military, and economic superpower.
To paraphrase Paul Krugman on government spending, trade is a two way street where your spending is my income and my spending is your income.
We tried raising tariffs to protect local businesses and consumers in the 1930s and all we got was a lousy world war.
The only time broad tariffs genuinely worked in America's interests was under Jefferson, when his devastating tariff hikes jump-started the industrial economy.
I'm no history expert, but I think it's fair to say that a solution for a pre-industrial backwater might not work as well when it comes to a (then unimaginable) technological, military, and economic superpower.
To paraphrase Paul Krugman on government spending, trade is a two way street where your spending is my income and my spending is your income.