Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Lawrence W Reed
“Since his twenties, Gallatin had voiced support for free trade between nations. … As Treasury Secretary, he opposed President Thomas Jefferson’s Embargo of 1807 but felt duty-bound to enforce it. While that painful experience tarnished his free trade credentials, he would burnish them again in Philadelphia in the fall of 1831. The Democratic-Republicans under Jefferson and Madison repealed internal excise taxes and instead put the country on the path to rely primarily on tariffs to fund the federal government. … in 1816, they introduced the country’s first ‘protective’ tariffs, aimed at helping certain industries by making the products of their foreign competition artificially high. One result was to ignite a debate that factored into the sectional strife of the Civil War a half-century later, and which stirs passionate debate in Congress and the country even today.” (10/17/24)
https://fee.org/articles/albert-gallatin-and-the-free-trade-convention-of-1831/