PICK A FIGHT WITH OUR FOUNDERS ON TARIFFS, TRADE, AND IMMIGRATION? NO THANK YOU.
Tariffs on imports, cutting off trade with other nations, and anti-immigrant policies were declared on July 4, 1776 to be 3 of the 27 specific causes of the Revolutionary War which our nation’s Founders, America's original Patriots, waged against the feudal unitary executive, the English King, and His policies in the American Colonies.
The American Colonies had already been around for 156 years, since the November 21, 1620 arrival of the Mayflower with 102 Pilgrim souls, 49 of whom died, while 53 survived the privations, disease, and starvation of that first winter with the help of native peoples. Our Founders understood the life-and-death stakes, knew what made the American economy work, and what was in the way of their prosperity. It was the King, then our unitary executive and our chief decider of policies and law, who was strangling and sabotaging the Founder's "unalienable rights" to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
During the Revolutionary War, American Patriot soldiers, raiders, and marines fought and died for five years in running battles and raids against the King's troops. 14 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence (25%) were killed or died after torture. Another 12 of the 56 signers (21%) had their homes ransacked and burned, while 2 signers lost sons in the Revolutionary Army; and another signer had 2 of his sons captured. Their rebellious countrymen lived under the constant threat of British reprisals - burning, looting, harassment, arbitrary arrest, and torture.
The individual liberty, property rights, religious freedom, and economic prosperity which the Founder's own immigrant forebears had come to America to secure for themselves, their families, and their communities, meant everything to them. They sacrificed their lives so we might not live under the unitary tyranny of any single decider, a King, and His group of privileged and connected friends, running our lives and determining the fate of all the People.
From 1773 at the battles of Lexington and Concord, through the 1776 Congressional Declaration of war, until 1781, our Founders directly challenged the 156 year colonial rule of America by the unitary executive, the English King. In 1781, they won as the King withdrew his troops from the American Colonies. The American experiment in democracy was born - to a rough start operating under the Founder's 1781 Articles of Confederation. The thirteen colonies, now states, began fighting among themselves – over commerce, taxation, borders, and myriad other issues.
The Founder's regrouped in 1787, held the Constitutional Convention, and our Constitution was ratified in 1788 "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…" These words, together with the first ten constitutional amendments, our Bill of Rights, defined the Founder's core purposes for our American government. Federalism was born as three co-equal branches with separation of powers among all three - Congress, Executive (Presidency), and Supreme Court.
But freedom is not free, it requires vigilance to avoid being trampled by the selfish interests of a privileged few over the broad common interests of the People.....
WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW WE BECAME PROSPEROUS….
The economic issues here are not directly related to the illegal bioweapon, racketeering and rights program and litigation - but are directly on point regarding economic privation, subjugation, and inequality, which the King, the unitary executive, had imposed on His American Colonies. Those failed policies, which angered our Founders to war, have crept back into the national conversation – disguised as opportunities.
But those failed policies – tariffs on imported products, protectionist cutting off of trade with other nations, and anti-immigrant policies - are actually three among the 27 policy disputes which caused the Founder's to engage in the Revolutionary War against the King. They fought to banish those bad policies, which they knew as practical people including tradesmen, farmers, merchants, bankers, and news publishers, were holding back Americans seeking prosperity, and constraining their freedom from the King's arbitrary police powers and His favoritism of a few privileged people over the many others.
Since then, regular Americans - including our family - my great-great grandfather, a religious Quaker, Civil War US Army Private 2nd NY Cavalry bugler, and Medal of Honor winner at the Battle of Appomattox which ended the Civil War in 1865, as well as my own father and uncle - and millions of others from activists to veterans - have repeatedly fought to defeat those same bad policies - which favor a few, perpetuate their economic privilege, and impose added taxes called tariffs, as well as privation, subjugation, and inequality on regular, everyday people – here in America, and around the world.
AMERICA’S FOUNDERS SPOKE OUT STRONGLY AGAINST THE EFFECTS OF TARIFFS ON AMERICA'S PROSPERITY
At The 1773 Boston Tea Party, they destroyed tariffed products
On December 16, 1773, American colonists boarded English ships in Boston Harbor to throw tea into Boston Harbor to protest the tariff imposed on tea.
On July 4, 1776, they spoke out again in the Declaration of Independence, decrying imposed tariffs:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
Taxes on specific imported products are known as tariffs. These tariffs are passed on to the purchasers of those products in the colony or country where they are consumed through price increases on those specific products. The cost of the tariff is directly paid by the importer and built into the prices they charge, so these price increases are inflationary exactly as any other price increase is, reducing consumer purchasing power for all other goods and services – just like a pay cut would also reduce a family’s purchasing power. Imposing tariffs typically results in retaliatory tariffs which raise prices dramatically, and result in trade wars which can cut off trade between nations, depressing both countries’ own economies. The Founders protested these tariffs, added costs imposed on them by the unitary executive, the English King, with the Boston Tea Party and other protests against tariffs and transaction taxes beginning in 1773.
In the early years after independence in 1781, America’s founders used tariffs on a limited range of products to finance a small federal government which started with a few dozen employees in 1789. After a time, they steadily reduced tariffs to encourage international trade so they could sell American products to other countries in return for agreeing to reducing tariffs on imported products. By steadily reducing tariffs on imported products, they increased the buying power of all Americans, which stimulated economic growth and prosperity as Americans bought still more products and services in America.
In 1920-30, the US reimposed a broad range of tariffs on imports. Under the Smoot-Hawley Act, passed by the House of Representatives in May 1929, Congress would double many tariffs, precipitating a global trade war. This caused the October 1929 Wall Street stock market crash amid the massive unregulated stock market price action speculation of the Roaring 20s. As tariffs and retaliatory tariffs expanded among nations, global trade collapsed by 67%, and American industry suffered the consequences of lost sales and profits. Widespread bank failures occurred all over the US in the 1930s as economic conditions deteriorated with mass bankruptcies of businesses and farms. As America's uninsured banks collapsed (there was no deposit insurance and bank depositor panic withdrawals spread like wildfire), critical local sources of business and agricultural financing completely disappeared in many places, causing still more business and agriculture industry failures.
With little bank financing available to meet payrolls and finance sales, the Great Depression resulted as businesses collapsed and industry ground to a halt. Free market agricultural prices collapsed as desperate farmers overproduced in unregulated agricultural markets (there were no agriculture price supports nor subsidized crop insurance). The US economy entered a deep economic depression as the official unemployment rated soared from 8% in early 1929 to over 25% by 1931, which continued until the US entered World War II in late 1941. Massive federal spending on weapons and other military hardware beginning in 1942 effectively rescued the American economy, but cost America 550,000 killed in action in a global war which killed 60 million people.
When national governments impose tariffs on products imported from other countries, this typically results in retaliatory tariffs by that country on imports from the other nation. This depresses trade and economic growth in both countries, since tariffs increase consumer prices, which reduces the amount of money consumers have available to spend on other goods and services. For example, China reacted to Trump's US government tariffs on Chinese made technology and other products imported to the US in 2018-2019. They imposed retaliatory tariffs on American agricultural products. Since the overall market demand for these farm products went down, this cycle of tariffs and retaliatory tariffs reduced the market price paid to all US farmers who produced those corn and soybean products, and put a significant number of American farmers out of business. America and Europe have also had similar less-publicized trade spats over specific kinds of products in recent years – such as European nations’ wine exports to America at a time when overall American wine consumption has been declining, and American agricultural products, technology products, and services being subject to European Union tariffs and regulatory standards, and so forth.
AMERICA’S FOUNDERS SPOKE OUT STRONGLY ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF IMMIGRATION TO AMERICAN PROSPERITY
On July 4, 1776, in the Declaration of Independence, our Founders complained about specific policies imposed on them by the unitary executive, the English King, declaring:
Among those 27 specific grievances was their 7th grievance - against the King’s anti-immigrant policies, which hamstrung economic prosperity in the American Colonies:
"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
The Founders were practical people who understood that their own economic prosperity depended upon immigration to increase the availability of other tradespeople, merchants, laborers, farmers, wagon drivers, dock workers, bankers, and other workers who could power economic growth. Filling a job in the 1790s created 2 to 7 more jobs, as it still does, since 70% of our American economy is based on people consuming products and services – the food, fuel, travel, services, and other things people eat, use, and do every day. Without healthy consumers – workers in other types of trades and jobs who could afford to consume the things they produced – none of these Founders would prosper and their neighbors wouldn’t either.
Immigration is the tool the Founders used to fill their worker shortage and create more of the economic growth they wanted for their own prosperity. The unitary executive’s (the English King) anti-immigrant policies were holding the American Colonies back economically.
Economic Realities Have Changed AND Have Remained The Same
That same situation is true today. We have a relatively low national birth rate with 1.1 births compared to the 2.1 per woman birth rate needed for replacement. As a result of that low birth rate and restrictive immigration policies, there are only 0.9 people available for every one of the 8 million jobs openings available (search BLS.gov JOLTS to see this straightforward set of facts). Since pay rates, location, and skills also matter to find the right fit of worker to job, we are short of workers in our economy, so it is growing significantly more slowly than it could. This slower private sector economic growth reduces incomes and long-term prosperity for all of us.
A recent example of how this works – the unemployment rate went up by 0.3% in August 2024 - because more people entered the job market. The press reported this as an indication of a “softening” of the job market – a sign of decline. But what actually happened here? The number of jobs filled went up by over 112,000 in September (254,000) compared to August (142,000) – because the number of people with the right skills in the right places had increased in August, creating the matches needed to fill some of the 8 million jobs still available in September. Cause and effect – more economic growth is created by more available workers in the right places with the right skills who are willing to accept the pay rates being offered.
Immigration, and the flexibility and mobility of immigrants, have filled this economic gap throughout 404 years of American economic history – since the Mayflower with its 102 Pilgrims arrived in America on November 21, 1620, and with the modest existing Native American population, used immigration to grow America to 337 million people today.
Modern Immigration Issues Are Not Resolved By Current Policies Nor By Repression
But what about border security? The twenty 9/11 hijackers entered America legally on student visas, cleared through the normal governmental process as no records indicated they were security risks. Around fifteen people previously convicted of homicide or manslaughter in other countries were arrested at the southern border in 2023. The overall immigrant crime rate is the same or slightly lower than native-born Americans. America hosts between 140 and 190 million visitors who enter on tourist, student, and other visas from other nations every year. Around two-thirds of visa overstays are among people who mostly arrive at airports like JFK, O’Hare, Los Angeles, and Dallas, not at our southern border. And the overall visa overstay rate over 20 years is about two per thousand arrivals, around 0.002%.
What about these undocumented immigrants? They should not be here illegally. That much is true. Rounding up 12 million people would reduce the available workforce by around 7 to 8 million people, mostly in lower paid jobs most Americans don’t really want in agriculture, slaughter plants, hotels as room attendants, midnight custodial and maintenance services, as gig delivery workers, and in other lesser paid jobs. And bust up American families, as many have children born in the US - who are absolutely entitled to the same 14th Amendment protections, adopted by two-thirds of House and Senate members and three-quarters of State Legislatures in 1868, as every other American: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.”
The Founders understood the benefits of immigration, and the Civil War era 14th Amendment reaffirmed America’s commitment to providing the benefits of citizenship to all in America. As a purely practical economic matter, depriving our US economy of 7 to 8 million undocumented workers now, when it is already short of workers as described above, would dramatically impact many smaller businesses, agriculture, and food processing industries, and drive up food prices and other prices broadly as our existing labor shortages worsened.
A roundup of 12 million people would ripple across the American economy - bringing inflation to grocery store, foodservice, and service industry prices, and job loss to each of the 2 or 3 Americans who produce, move, and sell the food, fuel, and other products which each one of the 7-8 million or so undocumented employees consume as they power their current employers' businesses. The negative effect of large workforce reductions on other jobs is discussed at EPI.org search publications for Job Multiplier Effect.
Farms, slaughter plants, construction companies, retailers, hotels, restaurants, and many other businesses which employ entry and mid-skill personnel would be immediately distressed by this loss of employees. Main Street small business failures and bankruptcies would result from the labor shortages, and from the inflationary price increases and reduced consumer purchasing power which would also result, much like the Covid pandemic, and other prior economic recessions, have stressed and destroyed millions of small businesses, the places where most Americans work.
Rather than a roundup, President Ronald Reagan worked out a program with Congress in the 1980s that gave 3 million workers the right to remain in America and seek permanent legal status. Some stayed, others went home when their home country economies improved. Our Founders knew what they were doing for the American economy by being willing to sacrifice and even die for their staunchly pro-immigration policies - number 7 on their list of 27 specific reasons to go to war with the authoritarian English King.
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