[[link removed]]

TRUMP, HISTORIANS, AND THE LESSONS OF U.S. TARIFF HISTORY  
[[link removed]]


 

Elizabeth McKillen
May 9, 2025
Labor and Working-Class History Association
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Labor historians should be particularly concerned about Trump’s
misuse of tariff history because his tariff policies remain popular
with many working-class voters and labor union leaders despite the
recent economic meltdown they have caused. _

William McKinley election poster, by unknown artist.for his 1896
campaign, which he won. He was reelected in 1900 but was assassinated
just nine months into his second term.,

 

In his recent executive order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to
American History,”
[[link removed]] President
Donald Trump criticized historians for “replacing objective facts
with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than
truth.” In a subsequent order
[[link removed]] he
called for the elimination of “radical indoctrination” by history
teachers in K-12 schools and demanded it be replaced by a patriotic
curriculum that celebrated American greatness and achievements. He has
also increasingly tried to force his patriotic version of American
history on colleges and universities by gaining more control over the
accreditation process and threatening to withhold funds from those
universities that continue to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion
in either their curriculums or their admissions and disciplinary
policies.

American historical associations have responded quickly to Trump’s
executive orders and have argued that he is the one who is trying to
censor history to serve his own ideological agenda by forcing history
teachers to ignore negative aspects of U.S. history such as slavery. 
The Organization of American Historians, for example, responded to
Trump’s orders
[[link removed]] by
noting that “This is not a return to sanity.  Rather, it sanitizes
to destroy truth.”

Labor historians should be particularly concerned about Trump's misuse
of tariff history because his tariff policies remain popular with many
working-class voters and labor union leaders despite the recent
economic meltdown they have caused.

Although historians have devoted significant attention to Trump’s
efforts to impose a patriotic form of history at all levels of the
educational system, they have spent less time examining how Trump has
repeatedly used U.S. tariff history to defend his own tariff policies.
Yet much can be learned from this application of history to his
agenda.  Articles published in the popular press have pointed to the
egregious factual errors in his accounts of tariff history. But more
troubling from a historical perspective is his almost total neglect of
changing historical contexts. Inattention to context in turn leads him
to misunderstand basic issues of cause and effect.  Labor historians
should be particularly concerned about Trump’s misuse of tariff
history because his tariff policies remain popular
[[link removed]] with
many working-class voters and labor union leaders
[[link removed]] despite
the recent economic meltdown they have caused.  Three examples will
suffice here.

President Trump’s favorite historical narrative has emphasized the
ways in which high tariffs helped Republicans achieve unprecedented
levels of national prosperity during the Gilded Age.  The primary
hero of his narrative is William McKinley who, as a congressman,
proposed and helped to pass legislation in 1890 enacting high tariffs
and subsequently ran successfully for president on a high tariff
platform.  Trump has argued repeatedly that “McKinley made our
country rich through tariffs.”
[[link removed]]

Yet there is clearly another side to the story often detailed in the
history textbooks Trump so detests. Prosperity during this era was
mostly limited to the new Robber Baron class of corporate leaders.
Most industrial workers lived in poverty despite working long hours in
notoriously unsafe factories, mines, and mills. Children as young as
ten were increasingly employed in industry because they were the
cheapest labor force and could be easily exploited.  These deplorable
conditions spawned militant strikes that were defeated only when
private detective agencies or state militias violently intervened, as
happened during the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. So high tariffs
did not translate to prosperity for industrial communities.
[[link removed]]

Family farms experienced equally tough conditions, as “bonanza”
farmers in the Midwest easily acquired expensive new machinery that
allowed them to more efficiently plow larger fields and to dominate
agricultural markets. They also gained cheaper rates for shipping
their products on the railways.  In protest, family farmers launched
a left-wing populist movement far different from Trump’s right-wing
populism.  Populists in the 1890s advocated for nationalization of
the rail lines, a more flexible currency, and a publicly run
subtreasury system that would provide interest-free credit for farmers
during the growing season.
[[link removed]]

A major depression occurred in 1893 and helped convince many corporate
leaders that the country had a problem with overproduction. Workers
and farmers, by contrast, emphasized that the problem was one of
underconsumption; they lacked sufficient wages to buy the exciting new
products being produced by factories.  As president, McKinley sought
to solve the problem of overproduction by increasing export markets
rather than improving conditions and wages for working people.

So, despite running on a high tariff platform, McKinley devoted
himself to seeking increased exports through negotiations with trading
partners that reduced tariffs

So, despite running on a high tariff platform, McKinley devoted
himself to seeking increased exports through negotiations with trading
partners _THAT REDUCED TARIFFS_. Historians argue that McKinley
engaged in imperialism during the Spanish-American War to acquire the
Philippines and Puerto Rico as vital links to secure trade routes to
China and South America. 
[[link removed]]

Trump’s omissions in his Gilded Age narratives reveal the narrow
lenses through which he views national wealth: only the people at the
top of the socioeconomic ladder matter, despite his political rhetoric
to the contrary.  A broader approach to the Gilded Age demonstrates
that tariffs were unsuccessful in bringing widespread prosperity or
even economic stability.  Political leaders, frightened by growing
social unrest, instead moved increasingly toward exports, and the
acquisition of some imperial outposts, to solve the problem of
overproduction.

Another of Trump’s historical narratives emphasizes that a lack of
tariffs caused the Great Depression of the 1930s.  But this narrative
is factually wrong.  Although Democratic President Woodrow Wilson
successfully implemented an income tax and reduced tariffs in 1913,
Republicans resumed control of the presidency in 1921. They imposed
high tariffs with the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922
[[link removed]], which
remained in effect throughout the decade.  Even higher tariffs were
implemented in 1930 with the Smoot-Hawley Act
[[link removed]], which
historians argue caused a reduction in international trade that
worsened the Great Depression.

Strangely, in his most recent speech about the Great Depression and
tariffs, Trump seemed poised to discuss Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New
Deal programs but instead grew distracted and rambled about the ramp
system
[[link removed]] that
had been developed in the White House to accommodate Roosevelt’s
polio-induced disabilities.  Yet it was the extension of New Deal
programs, as well as the increased safeguards which they guaranteed to
the labor movement, that decreased economic inequality and brought
about more broadly shared prosperity to the United States in the
post-World War II era.

A third historical narrative frequently employed by Trump is that the
North American Free Trade Agreement of the 1990s led many corporations
to close their factories in the United States and move them to Mexico
where they could employ workers at lower wages.  This narrative is
appealing to many Americans because it is at least partially true and
is part of the lived experience of several generations of Americans. 
Doubtless many are reminded of the loss of good paying jobs when
traveling through the small mill towns of the Northeast or the factory
towns of the Midwest and South, where abandoned manufacturing plants
and equipment still dot the landscape.  Trump has claimed that NAFTA
cost the United States 90,000 factories.  Other studies place the
loss of factories at around 70,500
[[link removed]].

The bigger issue, as with Trump’s rendering of the Gilded Age, is
that of historical context.  After World War II, the United States
increasingly relied on a free trade model in guiding its foreign
policies with other countries.  These policies made sense because the
United States emerged from the war economically far stronger than its
closest economic competitors and could dominate foreign markets as
well as its own internal markets.

Yet, in contrast to the Gilded Age or the 1920s, the United States
also assumed more responsibility during the post-World War II era for
maintaining the health of the international capitalist system. 
During the late 1940s, for example, the United States gave extensive
aid to Europe through the Marshall Plan to help it recover from the
war.  The United States also helped to rebuild the Japanese economy
during its military occupation of that country.  In 1961, the United
States created the U.S. Agency for International Development to help
eradicate poverty in poorer countries around the world.  U.S. aid
programs during the Cold War were not simply altruism, or giveaways,
as Trump has insisted. They were designed to thwart Communism and
build new export markets for American products.  Arguably, these
economic initiatives proved cheaper and more successful than U.S.
military and covert interventions designed to stop the spread of
socialism or communism during the Cold War.
[[link removed]]

U.S. history since 2000 suggests that neither tariff nor free trade
models are the best means of assuring American prosperity in an
increasingly globalized system of capitalism.

By the 1970s, however, U.S. economic prosperity was threatened by the
re-industrialization of Japan and Europe and by the desire of American
corporate leaders to lower labor costs by moving their businesses to
poorer countries.  The runaway plant movement predated NAFTA but drew
strength from it.  U.S. history since 2000 suggests that neither
tariff nor free trade models are the best means of assuring American
prosperity in an increasingly globalized system of capitalism.
Instead, a hybrid model of economic development is necessary. 
Trump’s tariff increases during his first term led to a net job
loss rather than job growth
[[link removed]].
The green economy initiatives of the Obama
[[link removed]] and Biden
[[link removed]] administrations
proved more successful in creating new jobs and should be a key
underpinning of future growth. This should include significant federal
subsidies, as outlined in the Biden administration’s Inflation
Reduction Act, to repair and update the aging mass transportation
infrastructures of the United States in ways that are environmentally
friendly.

As economists have suggested, the United States should also work to
further capitalize on areas in which it has developed new strengths
since NAFTA such as the tech fields and biomedical innovation. This,
however, will require restoring some of the research grants to federal
agencies
[[link removed]] and
to universities that Trump has recently eliminated. Efforts by
Congress to regain some control over tariff policy also seem critical
to ensuring that the needs of multiple economic stake-holders are
addressed.

Senator Bernie Sanders has recently attracted large crowds by
emphasizing that labor standards need to be considered in tariff
[[link removed]] decisions. 
He suggests the need for targeted and limited tariffs
[[link removed]] to
penalize low-wage countries led by authoritarian leaders but the
pursuit of “fair trade” with allies whose labor standards are
roughly comparable to those of the United States, or who are striving
to improve labor standards.Ironically, one innovation of the United
States-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Treaty
[[link removed]] (USMCA)
signed by Trump in his first administration might prove useful in
further advancing these kinds of labor goals.  AFL-CIO leaders and
Democrats in Congress successfully lobbied the Trump administration to
include an impressive Labor Charter in the treaty that requires the
three signatories to meet fair labor standards established by the
International Labor Organization.  It also created a mechanism for
monitoring labor standards in each country and developed a hotline for
reporting violations.  Although only used occasionally since the
treaty was ratified, this visionary framework seems to provide a more
promising way for current labor leaders and labor supporters to ensure
the growth of well-paying jobs in North America than Trump’s fairy
tale efforts to create a second Gilded Age. By isolating the United
States from the global economy and eliminating the New Deal-inspired
social welfare programs that have uplifted the standard of living in
the United States for generations, Trump will instead create a new
nightmare for working people.

[[link removed]] See
for example, Eric Foner, _ Give Me Liberty: An American
History_ 6th ed. (New York: 2020) 590-676
and [link removed].

[[link removed]] Foner, _Give
Me Liberty, _614-647.

[[link removed]] See
especially, Thomas McCormick,  _China Market:  America’s Quest
for Informal Empire, 1893-1901 _(Chicago, 1967).

[[link removed]] Thomas
McCormick, _America’s Half Century: United States Foreign Policy in
the Cold War and After. _2d. ed. (Baltimore,
1995); [link removed].

_[ELIZABETH MCKILLEN is a Professor Emeriti of History at the
University of Maine.  She is the author of two books on labor and
international affairs during the World War I era. Her views are her
own and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Maine.]_

* Tariffs
[[link removed]]
* Trade
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* Trump tariffs
[[link removed]]
* global economy
[[link removed]]
* Economic Policy
[[link removed]]
* Free Trade
[[link removed]]
* Globalization
[[link removed]]
* William McKinley
[[link removed]]
* Robber Barons
[[link removed]]
* U.S. history
[[link removed]]
* Labor Historians
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]