Presidents
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Motivation
Background
International Trade Overview
- “Policymakers have had three principal goals: raising revenue for the government, restricting imports to protect certain domestic industries from foreign competition, and pursuing reciprocity agreements with other countries to open foreign markets to US exports.” - Source
- “In the first era from 1790-1860, revenue was a key factor in setting import duties because they generated about 90 percent of the federal government’s income. (A federal income tax wasn’t implemented until Lincoln). In the second era, from the Civil War until the Great Depression, the restriction of imports to protect domestic producers was the primary goal of trade policy. In the third era, from the Great Depression to the Present, reciprocal trade agreements to reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade have been the main priority. - Source
- “Democrats advocated low import tariffs, and Whigs and Republicans advocated high protective tariffs. This partisan divide has a geographic basis: Democrats originally drew most of their support from the agrarian South, where farmers produced staple crops for export, and Whigs and Republicans drew most of their support from the industrial North, where manufacturers faced foreign competition.” - Source
- “The immediate result was a severe trade deficit. At least with respect to Britain, the United States imported 7.6 million but only exported 2.5 million over the three years 1784-1786.” - Source
- “From 1860 to 1913, import duties generated about half of the government’s revenue” - Source
- Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934
- International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977