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By Hugh Cameron
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The basis for Donald Trump's tariff policy "skips over a lot of history," according to a former White House official, who warned that the former president's tax plans threaten America's access to foreign markets.
Trump has made tariffs a staple of his economic plans on the campaign trail, telling interviewers and rallygoers that slapping hefty taxes on imported goods will shield U.S. industry from overseas competitors. However, while the Republican presidential nominee stands firmly behind this "America First" trade philosophy, the plan has faced considerable scrutiny on both sides of the political spectrum.
In a Wednesday column for The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove took to task Trump's tariffs, and specifically the former president's use of another supposedly pro-tariff president—William McKinley—to endorse his plan.
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"He urges the U.S. to return to this 19th-century practice—even as he mischaracterizes McKinley's contribution to it," Rove wrote.
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Trump has on several occasions invoked the economic policies of McKinley, who held the Oval Office between 1897 and 1901, telling a Michigan crowd in late September that, "in the 1890s, our country was probably the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs."
Trump later told Fox News that McKinley was "a big tariff guy," but Rove, an adviser to the former president's 2020 campaign, takes issue with this endorsement of tariffs as an economic panacea, an ahistorical account he called "incomplete and superficial."
"Starting in 1893, America wallowed in a depression that lasted nearly four years. It ended only after McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan over the Democrat's call for an inflationary silver currency," Rove said. "McKinley's endorsement of the gold standard restored business confidence. It was this sound-money policy—not tariffs—that restored prosperity."
Rove, who served as a senior adviser and acting chief of staff during the George W. Bush administration, also said that while McKinley's tariffs were "proportional to those of other countries," Trump's take the protectionist policy to its extremes.
He compares McKinley's 1890 Tariff Act, which increased average duties on imports from 38 percent to 49.5 percent, to Trump's promise to put a 200 percent tariff on everything sold by John Deere in the U.S., after the agricultural machinery manufacturer said it would be moving some production facilities to Mexico.
"These are fundamentally different approaches to trade," Rove said, adding that McKinley's support for tariffs was based on an economic ideology of "reciprocity," which focuses on "levying tariffs proportional to those of other countries and negotiating to lower them when possible."
"What was true in the 1890s is still true today: America needs foreign markets," Rove wrote. "McKinley used tariff policy to open the way for trade. If he wins, will Mr. Trump?"
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