A Letter: Tariffs

A Letter: Tariffs

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1986 responding to two articles published in The New American magazine, which is associated with the John Birch Society.]

    There seems to be some disagreement between two articles in your April 21 issue. Chamberlain argues correctly that tariffs, especially protective tariffs, are detrimental to the economy. Lockman, apparently in agreement with Ellis and Kurowski, whose book he reviews, argues in favor of tariffs as a primary source of revenue for the U. S. government. He evens favors protective tariffs.
    Lockman surely favors taxing imported oil heavily to subsidize domestic oil producers. U.S. industry and military run on oil. They certainly should not rely on foreign supplies. Let us have autarky for everything that the U.S. government considers essential — especially chrome, platinum, and other strategic metals for which there is little or no domestic sources.
    Certainly, not all the Founding Fathers favored protective tariffs. John Taylor of Caroline and many other leading Southern statesmen and agriculturalists realized that tariffs made the farmer a serf and the agricultural Southern States colonies of the Northern bankers and industrialists.
    To rely on Hamilton’s arguments in The Federalist Papers is to rely on the representative of the bankers and industrialists. Hamilton, the author of the federal deficit, was part of what the JBS [John Birch Society] would call the Insiders.
    Another fallacy of Lockman is that tariffs on imports are paid by foreigners. Tariffs on imports are no more paid by foreigners than sales taxes are paid by retailers. If the objective is to get foreigners to support the U.S. government, an impost on exports would be much more effective.
    Tariffs may be an acceptable source of revenue for government — as long as the tariff is uniform without favor to product or country and is no more than about five percent. Once a tariff becomes protective in nature, it subsidizes inefficiency, incompetence, and the politically powerful. It injures the economy in the ways Chamberlain points out — and worse.
    The Southern colonies have but one hope of regaining their lost liberties, free trade, and low taxes. That hope is to follow the example of the Founding Fathers, who seceded from England. The time has come for a free and independent confederation of free and independent Southern States.

Copyright © 1986 by Thomas C. Allen.

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