In a special America 250 issue, Reason magazine revisited the founding ideas of the United States, challenging the narrative promoted by former President Donald Trump and others that tariffs were foundational to the nation’s economic independence.

Last year, Trump unveiled a gold-framed painting in the White House depicting himself surrounded by historical figures known for supporting import taxes: Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, and William McKinley. Trump has long emphasized tariffs, declaring during his first presidential campaign that free trade was "a direct affront to our Founding Fathers," who "understood trade" and believed tariffs were necessary to secure economic independence. He lamented that "two hundred forty years after the Revolution, we have turned things completely upside-down," and called for a renewed declaration of economic independence through tariffs.

Trade Representative Jamieson Greer echoed this perspective in 2021, asserting that "America's wealth was built by an American system" of trade protectionism and industrial subsidies, a system he claims was abandoned in favor of free markets after World War II. Vice President J.D. Vance has also promoted a similar view.

However, historical records provide a more nuanced picture. Benjamin Franklin, anticipating Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations," noted that "No Nation was ever ruin'd by Trade; even, seemingly, the most disadvantageous." Several years after the Declaration of Independence, John Jay assured Spain that the new nation would pursue free trade. Moreover, after reviewing a tariff bill, James Madison wrote to a Kentucky congressman expressing concerns, stating, "Candor obliges me to add that I cannot concur in the extent to which the pending Bill carries the Tariff, nor in some of the reasonings by which it is advocated."

These historical insights suggest that while tariffs played a role in early American economic policy, they were not the defining principle of the nation's founding economic philosophy.

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