Trump’s Aluminum Tariff: A Teachable Moment

President Trump’s proposed ten-percent tariff on refined aluminum yields a teachable moment for Southern history students. Historical analysis of the industry reveals an echo of the Northern tariff policies that angered Southerners during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the South was generally a raw materials exporter and feedstock supplier to Northern manufacturers.

Tariffs during the era usually protected the Northern factories against competition from imports. Finished cotton goods made in New England, for example, benefitted from high tariff walls against imports of British finished goods. In contrast, a hypothetical raw cotton tariff could not benefit Southern cotton farmers because they were already the World’s low cost producers. In other words, a raw cotton tariff could not have blocked any imports since the imports were already negligible because of the South’s intrinsic cost advantage.