Nothing Divides America Like Tariffs

Sitting at the intersection of so many political divides, tariffs have polarized Americans from the very beginning.

A drawing from around the time of the 1828 tariffs.

The first major piece of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress was a tariffs bill, imposing a 5% tax on most imports. In a symbolic flourish, President George Washington signed it into law on July 4, 1789. I can only assume he declared it “Liberation Independence Day.”

The divided soul of tariffs was evident from that first bill. Some lawmakers supported more limited tariffs, with the goal of raising revenue in mind. Others pushed for measures to target Great Britain economically, as tensions lingered from the war. Still other congressmen wanted tariffs to protect specific industries that were beginning to grow in the new country.

It’s not so different today, when some Trump allies describe his tariffs as a play to raise revenue, perhaps to the point that the income tax could be eliminated. Others talk about competing with adversaries like China. And others want to revive domestic manufacturing. These are contradictory goals: if domestic manufacturing increases, the amount raised from tariffs will fall; suddenly, they won’t make for a very reliable stream of revenue. But the lawmakers of 1789 plowed on, just like the Trump administration does today.

They couldn’t help themselves: as soon as one legislator tried to protect an industry in his state, another wanted to protect one in his. “The same arguments were offered over and over again, and the result was always the same,” the economist William Hill wrote in 1893, describing the 1789 deliberations. “Each member asked for and secured protection on the articles produced in his state, and each member opposed taxes which he thought were likely to prove burdensome to his constituents.” What started as a revenue bill slowly became the first act of American protectionism.

By the end of Washington’s first term, Congress was split over tariffs once again. The 1792 debate devolved into a proxy war between James Madison, a congressman, and Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury Secretary. Hamilton had recommended new tariffs in a Report on Manufactures, now considered to be his magnum opus. Madison believed Hamilton had overstepped by calling for new legislation as a member of the executive branch. The Washington administration, he and his allies alleged, were trying to take “the power of the purse” from Congress.

Hamilton won the battle; it was one of the first wounds to open between the two men, who had authored the Federalist Papers together just a few years earlier. Before long, Hamilton would be a leader of the Federalist Party. Madison would be championing the Democratic-Republicans.

Tariffs sit at the intersection of so many debates that have roiled our country from the very beginning: over the level of taxation, the size of government, America’s role in the world, the divide between economic classes, and — even in the time of Madison and Hamilton — the struggle between legislative and executive power. Tariffs were there at the birth of political parties, and they’ve snaked through American history ever since, reliably popping up at times of peak political polarization.

When America went through one of its first true constitutional crises — the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s — tariffs were to blame. This was yet another power struggle: between North and South, between the federal government and the states. The North, whose economy was based on manufacturing, wanted protective tariffs. The South, who economy was based on trade, didn’t.

So Southern legislators crafted a measure so extreme — implementing up to 50% tariffs, the highest in history up to that point — that they were confident even their Northern counterparts wouldn’t support it. This was a win-win, they figured: their constituents wouldn’t have to face tariffs, but they could also pin blame on the North for defeating them, thereby appealing to protectionist voters. But they miscalculated: the bill received enough support to pass. The tariff of 1828 — crafted to be so damaging that no one could possibly approve it — became known as the “Tariff of Abominations.”

Congress later followed with another tariff, in 1832, which led John C. Calhoun to lead South Carolina in drafting an unprecedented treatise asserting a state’s right to nullify federal legislation. The “Ordinance of Nullification” declared that the 1828 and 1832 tariffs were unconstitutional and would not be enforced on South Carolina territory. Congress passed a bill authorizing the president to use military force against South Carolina, but eventually a compromise tariff was negotiated, and the crisis was (for the moment) averted. The same North-South tensions, of course, would soon expand into the Civil War.

Before then, though, tariffs sparked the first-ever presidential impeachment effort. John Tyler had inherited the presidency from William Henry Harrison, who died after 31 days in office — but he wasn’t fully bought in to his running mate’s Whig Party agenda, which included raising tariffs. In 1842, Tyler responded to a tariff bill with a veto, an act which, up to that point, had largely been reserved for measures a president deemed unconstitutional.

Whig legislators, claiming that Tyler had infringed on legislative power by vetoing a bill for purely ideological reasons, introduced an impeachment resolution against him. Former President John Quincy Adams, then a congressman, alleged that Tyler had placed the legislative and executive branches “in a state of civil war.” But the impeachment resolution failed to notch a House majority.

For much of the next century, tariffs lingered as one of the nation’s most divisive political footballs. As a congressman, William McKinley — Trump’s protectionist role model — introduced the McKinley Tariff of 1890, which were backed by Republicans and bitterly denounced by Democrats. Then, as president, McKinley followed it with new tariffs in 1897.

The tariff rate toggled up and down for a few decades, until the notorious Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which raised import taxes on over 20,000 goods. After the bill passed Congress, more than 1,000 economists signed a petition begging Herbert Hoover to veto it; he ignored their advice. U.S. trade collapsed, and the unemployment rate shot up. Most experts agree that the measure helped worsen the Great Depression.

It also largely succeeded in wiping tariffs out of American political discourse. Democrats lowered import taxes once Franklin Roosevelt took office, and the global economic system he helped create — favoring trade over tariffs — persisted until Wednesday. Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement will hike up U.S. tariffs to their highest level since Smoot-Hawley.

It is only natural that, at this time of rising polarization, tariffs would return to the fore of American politics, just as they have in other precarious periods. Trade policy, after all, is more than a little responsible for the economic divides that fueled Trump’s political rise in the first place.

But Republicans may regret waking the sleeping giant. Almost every major tariff hike in American history has backfired politically for its proponents.

John Quincy Adams hemorrhaged political support after approving the 1828 tariffs (the ones that were so “abominable” that its drafters assumed he wouldn’t sign it). Adams lost re-election to Andrew Jackson a few months later.

The McKinley Tariff of 1890, which Trump speaks so fondly of, proved toxic in that year’s elections. Republicans lost 93 House seats, the second-worst midterm year for a president’s party in U.S. history. In 1892, Democrats retook the White House, with tariffs as a major campaign theme.

After the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, Republicans lost 52 seats in the 1930 midterms; in 1932, Democrats won the presidency with 472 electoral votes while picking up 12 Senate seats and 97 House seats. (Of course, the Great Depression was the primary reason, but the tariffs are widely seen as having helped exacerbate the crash, and they were, once again, a talking point for Democrats on the campaign trail.)

Until this week, those were probably the three most prominent tariff increases in history. None of them proved popular politically.

Already, the Liberation Day Tariffs of 2025 appear poised to join that trend. Without a doubt, Trump’s announcement marked the riskiest gamble of his presidency thus far — and in precisely the area where Americans already trust him the least, as this chart by G. Elliott Morris illustrates:

Chart by G. Elliott Morris

The market reaction to the tariffs was abysmal: U.S. stocks had their worst day since March 2020, the beginning of the Covid pandemic, shedding roughly $3 trillion in value just on Thursday. The selloff has continued this morning, with fears of a widening trade war exacerbated by China’s announcement that it will retaliate with 34% tariffs on all U.S. imports.

JP Morgan analysts now see a 60% chance of a global recession by year’s end.

As ever, nobody knows how far Trump will push this. White House officials spent Thursday insisting that the tariffs were not negotiable; Trump would not back down, they said, and strike deals with specific countries. Already, this morning, he has contradicted them.

“Just had a very productive call with To Lam, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, who told me that Vietnam wants to cut their Tariffs down to ZERO if they are able to make an agreement with the U.S. I thanked him on behalf of our Country, and said I look forward to a meeting in the near future,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

But with Trump unwilling to give markets the certainty they crave, the only alternative is likely for Congress to overrule Trump on tariffs — that is, if Republicans are spooked enough by political backlash to do so.

As we know, struggles between the executive and legislative branches have animated tariff debates sine the days of Hamilton and Madison, and John Tyler and the Whigs. The inexorable trend has generally been presidents winning these battles.

One largely forgotten episode came in 1932, two years after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs went into place. As the economic crisis worsened, Congress tried mount a last-ditch effort to avoid all-out catastrophe. House Ways and Means Committee chair James Collier introduced a bill to revoke some of the flexibility that Smoot-Hawley gave to the president to set tariff rates; he wanted Congress to take back that authority, and lower tariffs in the process. Enough progressive Republicans joined Democrats that the measure was able to pass.

But the president issued a veto, squashing the revolt from some members of his party. “There never has been a time in the history of the United States when tariff protection was more essential to the welfare of the American people than at present,” Hoover insisted in his veto message. He refused to reverse course, or to cede back any of the powers Congress had awarded him. A veto override effort failed to receive enough votes in either chamber.

An opposite incident took place in 1980, when Jimmy Carter imposed a fee on oil imports. Fearing the political backlash of increased gas prices, Democratic lawmakers rebelled against their party leader and passed a bill to repeal the import fee. “The country’s attitude was very clearly signaled on this,” Rep. Tom Foley (D-WA), a future House speaker, told the Washington Post at the time. “Congress was reacting to a widely unpopular tax.”

Carter refused to sign the bill, but his veto was overridden in a pair of lopsided votes: 335-34 in the House, and 68-10 in the Senate. “The boisterous legislators hooted and sarcastically applauded the White House messenger carrying the veto,” according to Congressional Quarterly.

It is the only time in the last 70 years that a House and Senate controlled by the president’s party overrode a veto.

Republican lawmakers would need to stage a similar rebuke for Trump’s tariff policy to be reversed. The only difference: Carter had one of the weakest grasps on his party of any president in modern history. Trump has one of the strongest.

Even still, GOP lawmakers haven’t exactly been falling over themselves to promote the tariffs. “The mood in the Capitol has turned quite dark recently,” veteran congressional reporter Jake Sherman tweeted this morning.

On Wednesday, four Republican senators bucked Trump to back a measure that would undo his Canada tariffs. Then, on Thursday, a measure to take back tariff powers from the president gained a small, but surprising, level of Republican momentum.

The innocuously named Trade Review Act of 2025 would end any presidentially imposed tariffs that aren’t approved by Congress within 60 days — flipping the onus from lawmakers needing to reject tariffs in order to end them (the current status quo) to lawmakers needing to approve tariffs in order to keep them.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introdued the bill with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). In quick succession, three more Republican senators joined as co-sponsors: Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) also told reporters that he plans to support the legislation.

But the bill is still unlikely to pass either the House or Senate, and certainly not with large enough majorities to override an almost-certain veto. Republican lawmakers still seem to fear the political backlash that would come with breaking with Trump more than backlash from the tariffs.

Even Grassley, the measure’s co-author, felt the need to clarify on X on Thrusday: “If u r trying to make the Trade Review Act about current events/Trump tariffs U R MISSING THE MARK I’ve long expressed my view that congress has delegated too much authority on trade to the executive branch under Republican & Democrat presidents.”

That post was likely in response to backlash Grassley has received from Iowa Republicans, a sign of what awaits other GOP members if they split off from the president.

At least for now. Nothing scrambles American politics like economic crisis — and in moments of political and economic upheaval, you often don’t have to look far to find tariffs at their center.