The Least Objectionable Tax
This article originally appeared in the February 26, 2001 issue of The New American. Its review of what the Founding Fathers had to say about tariffs is as relevant today as it was the day it was written — perhaps more so, considering that President Trump has ratcheted up tariffs, and the debate over tariffs and who should impose them is now raging in the headlines.
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Reporting back from the constitutional convention of 1787, Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth informed their governor that the proposed new Constitution would give the federal Congress the power to tax for the first time. “It is probable that the principal branch of revenue will be duties on imports [that is, tariffs],” Sherman and Ellsworth explained in a September 26, 1787 letter to Governor Samuel Huntington. “What may be necessary to be raised by direct taxation is to be apportioned on the several states, according to the number of their inhabitants; and although Congress may raise the money by their own authority, if necessary, yet that authority need not be exercised, if each state will furnish its quota.”
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