William McKinley: Prostitute of Protectionism
In his inaugural address President Trump called President William McKinley (1897-1901) “great” and proudly announced that he had changed the name of Mount Denali in Alaska back to Mount McKinley. The reason the president picked McKinley of all past presidents to heap praise upon is that McKinley was a lifelong political tool of big business, primarily Northern state manufacturers who championed protectionist tariff taxes so rabidly that he was called “the apostle of protectionism” and “the Napoleon of protectionism.”
President Trump’s election is said to be a “populist” victory against the deep state establishment, but there is nothing more anti-populist than protectionist tariff taxes. Protectionist tariff taxes are nothing more than a price-fixing conspiracy orchestrated by the state that enriches a relatively small group of politically connected corporations (and their unions) by plundering their consumers with higher prices. After all, if it is possible to use tariffs to force foreigners to pay a county’s taxes, every government on earth would be doing it. Yet President Trump apparently believes that he has discovered some kind of holy grail of economics that proves you can get something for nothing after all.
A Trump staffer or speech writer must have run across the book William McKinley: Apostle of Protectionism by Quentin R. Skrabec. The book explains how the admitted economic ignoramus William McKinley became the political heir to the corrupt Hamiltonian “American System” of corporate welfare, protectionist tariff tax plunder, and central banking. (His predecessors in that regard were Hamilton himself, replaced by Henry Clay, who was in turn replaced by Lincoln).
Skrabec’s book is full of over-the-top praise for McKinley, at one point comparing him to the Apostle Paul who would “spread the gospel of American protectionism.” Like McKinley, Skrabec is from Pennsylvania and Ohio iron and steel industry country, which perhaps explains his bromance with the 25th president.
Skrabec explains that McKinley never formally studied economics, by his own admission, but “learned his economics as an army supply officer” in Lincoln’s army. He also supposedly stayed up many nights “studyi
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