Tariffs and the Founding Fathers
Though free trade — really trade managed by an entity empowered to change countries’ laws — is portrayed as an unalloyed “good,” America’s influential Founders disagreed.
It is an oddity, considering the popularity of the play Hamilton, that its subject, Alexander Hamilton (shown) — America’s first secretary of the treasury — has emerged as a favorite of sorts among those who roundly dislike President Donald Trump. In fact, Vice President Mike Pence was even castigated from the stage of a production of Hamilton for the supposed sin of serving as Trump’s vice president.
This is largely due to the misconception that Hamilton was an immigrant (it has become liberal dogma to attribute all types of positive qualities to immigrants), coupled with the accusation that Trump is anti-immigrant. Of course, while Hamilton was not born in one of the colonies that emerged as the United States of America in 1776, he was born in a Caribbean colony that was part of the British Empire. This means he was no more an immigrant than a person today who moves from Texas to Arkansas.
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