In 1828, President John Quincy Adams gave a passionate defense over the use of tariffs to protect America's manufacturing interests predominately in the New England states. It was just months after the Tariff of 1828 known as the Tariff of Abominations was passed, and the opposition from all sections even among the New England states was growing. President Adams reminded Congress of how for many years, Great Britain had unfairly targeted American merchants to protect their own domestic markets. He accused Congress of being weak and helpless without any backbone to stand up to our rivals, and rather than just hide behind sectional disgruntlement, it was their constitutional responsibility to fix it.
John Quincy Adams was neither a merchant, nor a farmer, but rather Adams was an American diplomat. Never was there any American who could match the diplomatic career of John Quincy Adams. From the time he was appointed U.S. Minister to the Netherlands in 1793, Adams negotiated treaties, trade deals, land purchases, and foreign policy doctrines that guided American Diplomacy for over half of a century. In 1800, Adams as Minister to Prussia in 1800, Adams renewed a treaty of Amity and Commerce with the King of Prussia . It was originally negotiated by Thomas Jefferson. In 1818, he negotiated the Rush Bagot Treaty with Great Britain to reduce the armaments on the Great Lakes. Around that same time, Adams negotiated the Adams-Onis Treaty where Spain agreed to cede all of it's Florida territories for an agreement that we would pay five million dollars of indemnity payments owed to American citizens. Adams followed that with the negotiation of a free trade agreement with the King of Sweden and Norway to open the ports in Norway and Sweden to American merchants. And as Secretary of state, Adams was instrumental in drafting the Monroe Doctrine that defined America's intention to defend the western hemisphere from interference from the European powers. All of this, before the man ever became our sixth president.
As President, Adams was a man of diplomacy, a statesman, and a seasoned politician. His father had been president, and he was first appointed as Minister by none other than George Washington. Adams was James Monroe's Secretary of State, and succeeded him into office carrying the torch of free and reciprocal trade. The fury of trade deals that Adams negotiated as Secretary of State in 1817 until his final days of the presidency in 1829 is almost dizzying, yet Adams failed to achieve that great objective of free and reciprocal trade with Great Britain. This failure, was quite often used as an attack on Adams during his presidency. When Monroe with Adams by his side attempted to play hard ball with Great Britain, threatening to increase the foreign tonnage duties on all British vessels until they open up trade with the British West Indies, it backfired. Rather than opening up more trade with Great Britain, the act led to additional restrictions of trade with British Colonies in 1826 by the British Parliament under George IV. Adams' opponents referred to the the Act of 1823 as "Our next blunder, was the famous act of March, 1823; an act which will render its projector, our present Chief Magistrate, immortal."
Adams was not to be deterred. In 1826 when the British called off further negotiations on opening up trade with her colonies, Adams rescinded the Act of 1823, removing any favorable provisions that were granted to Great Britain and reverted to the previous acts of 1818 and 1820. It had been 12 long years of negotiations with the British without much hope. Not only, were the British refusing to open up trade with here colonies but they were flooding the American market with cheap iron, and placing tariffs on grains and prepared foods to protect their own domestic markets. One of the British laws, that Adams found quite nefarious was the Corn laws which set an artificially high price on grains and prepared foods in order to protect their domestic markets. The laws were reformed in 1828, but the protective measures remained in place and seemed to unfairly target the United States. In his final State of the Union Address, Adams suggested that the goal of the Corn Law reforms were to control the competition of American goods into England by restricting the import of our goods that competed with their own, and encouraging the import of goods that were not locally available. This had been going on for years, yet Congress did nothing. So president Adams used his bully pulpit reprimand Congress by asking, "Is the self-protecting energy of this nation so helpless that there exists in the political institutions of our country no power to counter-act the bias of this foreign legislation?" Adams accused the Congress of being "impotent' when it came to restoring the balance of trade destroyed by the laws of Great Britain.
"Is the self-protecting energy of this nation so helpless that there exists in the political institutions of our country no power to counter-act the bias of this foreign legislation; that the growers of grain must submit to this exclusion from the foreign markets of their produce; that the shippers must dismantle their ships, the trade of the North stagnate at the wharves, and the manufacturers starve at their looms, while the whole people shall pay tribute to foreign industry to be clad in a foreign garb; that the Congress of the Union are impotent to restore the balance in favor of native industry destroyed by the statutes of another realm?"Adams then segued into defending the recent tariff that was recently passed by Congress on May 19, 1828. The tariff placed a 38% tax on 92% of all imported goods. Initially this gave America's iron market and wheat market a big boost, but despite seeing some benefits, President John Quincy Adams paid a political price as it became known as the 'Tariff of Abominations". Much of the opposition came from the South where Adams' opponents claimed they were harmful to southern agrarian interests. Adams accepted this concern, and placed the responsibility to fix this on Congress. Adams, was confident that Congress ought to, and would modify the tariff accordingly to alleviate any unfair burdens on "any one section of the Union."
"More just and generous sentiments will, I trust, prevail. If the tariff adopted at the last session of Congress shall be found by experience to bear oppressively upon the interests of any one section of the Union, it ought to be, and I can not doubt will be, so modified as to alleviate its burden. To the voice of just complaint from any portion of their constituents the representatives of the States and of the people will never turn away their ears."His opponents though, notched up the opposition by claiming that the tariff was unconstitutional because it favored one sector of the economy over another. To this, Adams replied that such talk was out of jealousy, and as long as middle class America including the merchants, the workers and the families were thriving, then complaints over the constitutionality of taxes imposed for the protection of domestic manufacturing would abate.
"But so long as the duty of the foreign shall operate only as a bounty upon the domestic article; while the planter and the merchant and the shepherd and the husbandman shall be found thriving in their occupations under the duties imposed for the protection of domestic manufactures, they will not repine at the prosperity shared with themselves by their fellow citizens of other professions, nor denounce as violations of the Constitution the deliberate acts of Congress to shield from the wrongs of foreigns the native industry of the Union."Other opponents attacked the tariff on the grounds that it would "impare the revenue". Adams responded, that it was still to soon to be sure, but he was confident that the impact would be very minimal. He accepted that the impact of protecting one "avenue of trade" would very likely impact other areas of trade, and that placing a tariff on one export would likely lead to the decrease in the import of other. That is precisely what a tariff is designed to do, it either increases the export of one article of trade or decreases the import of others. But Adams continued to argue that it only naturally follows that when the export of one article increases so to would the import of other materials such as the raw materials needed to produce that article. Thus, the revenue that may be lost as the imports of one article decreases, will be made up by the increase of another. For example, placing a tariff on the cars from Europe would lead to less taxes collected on the import of those cars, but at the same time increased manufacturing of cars would lead to an increase in the need for steel. The taxes lost on the importing of cars would thus be offset by the taxes collected on the import of steel. The reverse is also true. There are many factors in play, that is for sure, and Adams concluded that the "effect of taxation upon revenue can seldom be foreseen with certainty". Only time would tell. But, in December of 1828 there were no symptoms of a decline in the receipts of the Treasury. Furthermore, costs of manufactured goods had not seen a spike in prices due to the tariff yet, because the domestic manufacturers were able to produce the same or similar product at a lower price. Adams argued that rather than send our hard-earned money to a foreign market, it was much better that the consumer's dollar was reinvested here in the United States.
"As yet no symptoms of diminution are perceptible in the receipts of the Treasury. As yet little addition of cost has even been experienced upon the articles burdened with heavier duties by the last tariff. The domestic manufacturer supplies the same or a kindred article at a diminished price, and the consumer pays the same tribute to the labor of his own country-man which he must otherwise have paid to foreign industry and toil."In his final remarks on the "Tariff of Abominations", President John Quincy Adams concluded that as it stands, the details of the Tariff were not acceptable to "the great interests of any portion of the Union". In fact, it was not even acceptable to the New England manufacturers to whom it was specially intended to protect. Adams explained, that the objective was to balance the burdens of our nation's manufacturing industry against the imposition of unfair trade restrictions placed on us by foreign nations without placing an undue burden on any one section of the Union. Adams then put the burden back on Congress, suggesting that they had the Constitutional authority and responsibility to fix it by removing the duties that serve only to aggravate the farmers, and retaining those that are truly needed to protect our manufacturing interests. Finally Adams warned that Congress should let practical experience (not politics) be their guide.
"The tariff of the last session was in its details not acceptable to the great interests of any portion of the Union, not even to the interest which it was specially intended to subserve. Its object was to balance the burdens upon native industry imposed by the operation of foreign laws, but not to aggravate the burdens of one section of the Union by the relief afforded to another. To the great principle sanctioned by that act -- one of those upon which the Constitution itself was formed -- I hope and trust the authorities of the Union will adhere. But if any of the duties imposed by the act only relieve the manufacturer by aggravating the burden of the planter, let a careful revisal of its provisions, enlightened by the practical experience of its effects, be directed to retain those which impart protection to native industry and remove or supply the place of those which only alleviate one great national interest by the depression of another."It was 4 years before Congress enacted any restrictions or reductions on the Tariff. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson signed the Tariff of 1832 which ironically was largely written by then former President John Quincy Adams. The Tariff of 1832 made some reductions in the existing tariffs to remedy the conflicts of it's predecessor but was still not acceptable to the South. South Carolina's opposition to it led to what is known as the Nullification Crisis, when they declared that tariffs of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional and null and void within the boundaries of the state. In the end, Senators Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun proposed a resolution known as the Tariff of 1833 that was acceptable to South Carolina.
References
Presidency.ucsb.edu. (2018). John Quincy Adams: Fourth Annual Message. [online] Available at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29470 [Accessed 29 Jul. 2018].Other sources are embedded in article above.
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