Talk:History of tariffs in the United States

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The singular "Tariff" in the article heading sounds very wrong. I think it should be "Tariffs in United States history". I'm not sure if I can explain why it sounds wrong, but I suspect it's because "Tariff" is not an abstract noun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KurumaCè (talk • contribs) 18:43, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Horribly POV. How do we know how people felt? Could some evidence for what someone felt at least be given?--Ryan Wise (talk) 22:17, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

--Robbiet480 (talk) 03:34, 24 October 2008 (UTC) someone needs to fix the overlapping header. my useragent... Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_5_5; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Safari/525.20.1

--68.4.62.132 02:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)tarrifs had effects on many things. they were high taxes on imported goods.

--User:Frodowilson 10:16 22 November 2006 ~The writing in certains parts of this is very clearly and animately opinionated. If the author is trying to express the sentiment of the times then it should be done in quotations. A fairer treatment to the tariffs would be excellent for this article. If you are knowledgeable please step up and fix this.

this is about tariff HISTORY. any specific suggestions would be welcome. Rjensen 04:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

The lead reads like an essay - consider rewritting it. Morphh ^(talk) 21:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I tried to rewrite some of this but it really needs some work and some inline citations. Morphh ^(talk) 21:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The section that is entitled 'Low Tariff Period 1913--' requires revision; it creates the impression that the US kept lower tariffs from 1913 to 1930, but in fact the Fordney McCumber Tariff passed in 1922, raised tariffs from 25% to 38%; in other words, after WWI, the US raised the economic drawbridge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Guerre1859 (talk • contribs) 16:44, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The section entitled "Civil War Protective Policy 1861-1913" ignores the fact that tariffs fell during 1872 and 1875, and the tariff reforms of 1883 included cuts to tariffs as well as increases. Basically, the trend from 1870 to 1890 was FALLING tariffs. This article also includes very few references. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.103.160.78 (talk) 01:30, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Free Trade Bias

Rjensen removed the following material from the section "History and background" -

But this also can lead to international cartel activity and price fixing once the domestic industry has been weakened or even destroyed as in the case of the U.S. electronics industry and recently the U.S. automobile parts industry.

with the statement "drop unsourced OR & speculation; drop poor sources -- only reliable secondary sources can be used."

Perhaps Rjensen should google search "Japan price fixing" and then explain the reason for his "speculation" comment.

Also, the entire paragraph from which my material was removed has no source cited for it but apparently this doesn't matter as long as it demonized tariffs.

Please exlain why this is not an example of free trade biased editing.

FYI - http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2013/09/26/Nine-auto-parts-companies-two-execs-guilty-of-price-fixing/UPI-81571380217043/?spt=hs&or=bn

The U.S. Justice Department said nine auto parts firms and two executives have pleaded guilty to price fixing in its largest ever antitrust investigation.

The companies involved are all Japanese and the executives include one from Japan and one from the United States, the department said

Please do explain to me how the "largest ever antitrust investigation" in U.S. history qualifies as "drop unsourced OR & speculation; drop poor sources". Or do the U.S. Department of Justice and UPI qualify as "poor source"?Machinehead61 (talk) 05:50, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

antitrust has its own article. This is about the tariff. Rjensen (talk) 07:50, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, then why is this still in the article -

Railroads, for example, consumed vast quantities of steel. To the extent tariffs raised steel prices, they felt injured.

After all, "antitrust has its own article. This is about the tariff."

Machinehead61 (talk) 12:36, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

The sentence says (accurately) that the tariff on steel raised the price of rails that the RR had to buy. It's about how the tariff directly affected the RR profits. Rjensen (talk) 12:51, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

"Accurately? Do tell all. Cite the prices of U.S. steel rail, British steel rail and the tariff rates for the period and your source. This should be interesting.Machinehead61 (talk) 12:57, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Anyone interested in the topic ought to read Taussig (he's online free). He says that in 1881, British steel rails sold for $31 a ton, and if you imported them you paid a $28/ton tariff, giving $59/ton for an imported ton of rails. American mills charged $61 a ton--and made a huge profit. read it here: Frank William Taussig (1931). The Tariff History of the United States. p. 192. Rjensen (talk) 13:19, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for proving my point. You did exactly what a free trade biased person would do. You only looked far enough to find the evidence to support your agenda and completely ignored the evidence unkind to your agenda. Take the exact same book and look at page 293 - and I quote -

Perhaps the most striking consequence of these changed conditions was the new situation as to steel rails. With the aid of cheaper pig iron, and by means of improved methods, rails were made as cheaply as in Great Britain, if not more cheaply"

If you can find a 1909 edition of this same book, Taussig went into greater detail:

Production, Imports, and Foreign and Domestic Prices of Steel Rails (per ton)

Year....... Product in........Imports,......Average..........Average...........Average............Duty

...................U.S........Gross.........Price in.........Price in..........Excess in

.................Gross........Tons..........U.S..............England............U.S.

..................Tons

1894.......1,017,100..........--.............$24.00..........$17.50...............$6.50.............$7.84

1895.......1,300,300.........1,400...........$24.00..........$20.00...............$4.00.............$7.84

1896.......1,117,600.........7,800...........$28.00..........$21.00...............$7.00.............$7.84

1897.......1,630,000..........--.............$19.60..........$21.00.......... —$1.40.............$7.84

1898.......1,977,900..........--.............$17.60..........$23.50...............$5.90.............$7.84

1899.......2,271,100.........2,000...........$28.10..........$26.80...............$1.30.............$7.84

1900.......2,385,000.........1,500...........$32.30..........$36.00.......... —$3.70.............$7.84

1901.......2,872,900.........1,900...........$27.30..........$29.50.......... —$2.20.............$7.84

1902.......2,941,300.......63,500...........$28.00..........$27.40...............$0.60.............$7.84

1903.......2,991,800.......95,500...........$28.00..........$28.00...............$0.00.............$7.84

1904.......2,283,800.......37,700...........$28.00..........$22.50...............$5.50.............$7.84

1905.......3,375,600.......17,300...........$28.00..........$28.80.......... —$0.80.............$7.84

1906.......3,977,800.........5,000...........$28.00..........$31.20.......... —$3.20.............$7.84

1907.......3,632,700.........4,000...........$28.00..........$32.00.......... —$4.00.............$7.84

1908.......1,921,500.........1,700...........$28.00..........$29.10.......... —$1.10.............$7.84

F. W. Taussig The Tariff History Of The United States, 1909 p. 259

From 1871 to 1908, 5 out of a span of 38 years saw the U.S. price of steel rail exceed the English price by the tariff margin or greater.

33 out of 38 years - 87% of the time span - the U.S. price did not take full advantage of the tariff to increase its profits.

As the U.S. volume ramped up, the U.S. price eventually dropped below the English price.

Not exactly a U.S. steel industry hiding behind a tariff wall to price-fix the U.S. consumer for high profits.

Now why didn't you include this in the section - since the section covers this time period?Machinehead61 (talk) 14:10, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

PLease note the added details that Rjensen conveniently left out. History is far more complex than the one dimensional "free trade always good - protectionism always bad" theology. If Wikipedia is to ever become an accepted source of accurate historical information, it can't be controlled by editors guided by dogma that censors half the history.Machinehead61 (talk) 15:45, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

S. Walter Poulshock and this article

Hello, I've recently been reading about the case of S. Walter Poulshock, a historian specialising in American tariff politics who emerged as having completed extensive fraud in the 1960s, which led me to add an article on him. (His book was detected as fraud in 1966, but I think with the internet not around and a general reticence about the topic it was hard to get the word out.) This article cites him - can this be changed somehow? Obviously if this article's general interpretation relies on his work that might need some thinking. Blythwood (talk) 17:19, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

You're right – and I remember that episode when it happened. I fixed the text with a better cite. Rjensen (talk) 17:39, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

@Rjensen: - Brilliant, thank you so much. I was going to ask if you could look at my Poulshock article, but I see you’ve already done that. (Re the change you made, I said academic fraud generally, not specifically fabrication, but if you think the cases aren't comparable then I'm happy to go with that.) I should emphasise that I don't know much about this topic - just heard about it and when I saw that he was still getting cited in books published in 2013 I thought an article would be a good plan, so any input is really welcomed. Blythwood (talk) 18:35, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

thanks. :) the biggest academic fraud case (re history profession) was re Ward Churchill. Rjensen (talk) 21:39, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:History of tariffs in the United States/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

==WP Tax Class== Start class because the article needs references throughout.-- EECavazos (talk) 17:10, 16 November 2007 (UTC) ==WP Tax Priority== Mid priority because the article has importance, impact worldwide and will likely have high traffic. However the scope of the article is limited to one country and it is a history of a tax, which keeps the article from classifying as a higher priority.-- EECavazos (talk) 17:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 01:55, 1 January 2012 (UTC). Substituted at 07:38, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Straight from T Roosevelt to Trump

No mention of Smoot-Hawley 1930 and the Depression Ronald Reagan 1980s Japan semiconductor tariffs George W Bush 2002 steel tariffs 217.155.193.120 (talk) 12:33, 8 February 2019 (UTC)