I haven’t seen the comments on tariffs by the moron that Tom Woods refers to, but the ignorance of the American public on this issue is astounding, as I’ve learned from many other moronic responses to my book. For example, the official Claremont Institute line, espoused in National Review by Ken Masugi, is that, yes, the South was plundered by the Morrill Tariff of 1861, but the North did it out of pure altruism as a means of punishing those dastardly slave owners. What puerile bu_ _ _ _ _ t.
No one seems to understand the basic principle of international economics that a tax on imports (a tariff) is effectively a tax on exports as well. This is because nearly everyone else can succeed to an extent in passing on the higher costs of goods by charging more for whatever they sell, including their own labor, but exporters who sell in world markets are the least capable of doing so because of the fierceness of competition. They simply have to eat the higher cost of living. The South exported as much as three fourths of what it produced by 1860, so that a tariff would have been particularly burdensome. On top of that, tariffs reduce the income of foreign trading partners, leaving them with less income with which to buy American exported products. Tariffs harm all consumers, but impose a disproportionate burden on export-dependent regions.
The current issue of North & South magazine, which I have sent to Lew, has a debate over Lincoln between myself and a Lincoln idolater, and the editor invited James McPherson to weigh in on the tariff issue. McPherson made a fool of himself, and I correct him quite severely in a letter that will be published in the next issue.
3:03 pm on January 14, 2004
