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Perhaps the secret with tariffs is using them to protect industries which are already strong, or getting strong, to ram home the advantage further.

Therefore, maybe the challange for the US is to identify export sectors where it is currently strong and aim to maximise its share of these sectors.

ie, sectors like, aircraft manufacturing, farm machinery, computer software, etc

I guess the problem for most western countries is that they now have few competitve sectors left.

I think my note on the Constitutional betrayal (the coup over the Articles) hints that I would find less than pure motives on behalf of the nationalist aspirations of the Constitution generation. (I have two pictures of George Washington in my house so don't take it the wrong way.) As a rule, we should always do the opposite of Hamilton, but putting that aside, I certainly agree that trade protectionism was popular, not for the interests of the proletariat, however, but the interest of the elite's aspirations. Though invoking Hamilton does give me a glimpse at what story (a nationalist story) you wish to tell. Why dress it up under the interests of the working man who is consuming not only the cheap imports (let alone suspect domestic products) but financing at first glance a middle class lifestyle, but in reality, masking lower class habits with material items?

As far as special interest tariffs are concerned, I'd be satisfied with an across-the-board Value Added Tax applied to all imports, accompanied by tax rebates on all exports, as has been advocated by some of our few realistic economists and is the policy of most of our major trade rivals.

But please don't try to imply that tariffs represented some kind of betrayal of the vision for our Republic held by the Founding Fathers. The constitution explicitly allows for the imposition of tariffs, and trade protection was what Alexander Hamilton successfuly argued should be America's policy from the early days of our country.

I suppose I get lost in the story-telling of the protectionist folks in exactly what sort of Republic they want. That period you speak of also saw the great importation of the unwashed Southern and Eastern Euros who brought their traditions with them, congregated in the Eastern Seaboard urban districts and served as fodder for Imperial Wars yet to come as well as voting blocks.

I have no desire for the Republic to be Great (average is fine), be a Great Power, or to be a Shining City on a Hill. None of that interests me, though if I was a hard nationalists, and I did want to be a Great Power capable of projecting power and colonial projects, a tariff policy that united industrial (and in the case of Dole, agricultural) profits to the government (as we see with the wonderful Big Oil scenario in the present) would seem like a logical program for control, but I would not be so dishonest to argue that it was in the interest of the proletariat, let alone native Old Stock Americana middle class.

Back to Great Britain, would it have been so horrible if they had leaders prior to both wars who acted in the interests of their peoples and pursued peace rather than lie to their peoples (enter Strauss) and bankrupt the nation to pursue ancient traditions and prejudices of staving off a Continental Rival (France-Germany, the Iran-Iraq of another time) and paying for an Empire?

In our own time, does it do you or me any good to be a strong national power?

Let me state, I am all for abolishing the income tax and running the country on 'blanket' port collected tariffs, rather than special interests tariffs. I'd even extend it to the States if that nasty Constitution hadn't replaced my beloved Articles, so that native brewing, and native farming would have a leg-up on St.Louis swill makers using state roads, but I don't argue from a nationalist or economic perspective, rather an aesthetic perspective.

Sorry, Mr. Bowen, but I have to take exception with that. The half century between the Civil War and World War 1 was the period of greatest economic development in the United States. We went from being a largely agricultural economy, ruined by the Civil War, to the world's greatest economic power in that time. And that was the era of the bad ol' tariff. Contrast America's economic performance with Britain's at that time, which adopted Gladstone's trade liberalism, and whose once world-beating manufacturing base was so decimated by protectionist rivals (including the U.S.) that consequently the U.K. was unable to muster the productive resources to adequately defend herself during the Grat War, emerging from it a second-rate economy.

"Secondly, tariff policy tilted the power to Industry-Capital who did what Industry-Capital will almost always do, seek cheap labor. It took Boston Bluebloods, the aristocracy, to end that arrangement, thank you Cal Coolidge."

Well, we've had several decades of free trade now, and Industry-Capital is seeking cheap labor more aggressively than ever. Calvin Coolidge, by the way, was a staunch protectionist.

"it will always swing back to Fiat Money and Big Government as the starting point to undoing this mess."

Reckless printing of money and government spending surely has contributed to much of our economic mess. Unfortunately, the fiat dollar is here to stay. The U.S. treasury doesn't have enough gold left to return to a gold-backed currency (and wouldn't even if the Clinton Administration hadn't liquidated much of our gold reserves in the late '90s to help reduce the budget defecit). We went off the gold standard the last time because the Treasury was running out of gold to be redeemed for dollars. Ron Paul is an honest man with alot of good economic ideas, but a return to the gold standard just ain't gonnna happen.

A floundering fiat dollar has the effect of a tariff (imports more expensive, exports "cheaper") and it doesn't achieve the desired result, by the author's admission. Pre-Federal Reserve, pre-Big Government, yes, there were tariffs and the country prospered in spite of them, but I am of the opinion that these were simply rewards to Fat Cats and I am pretty sure a root cause of the Unpleasantness.

Secondly, tariff policy tilted the power to Industry-Capital who did what Industry-Capital will almost always do, seek cheap labor. It took Boston Bluebloods, the aristocracy, to end that arrangement, thank you Cal Coolidge.

Paleocons of the "protectionist" mindset are much more convincing appealing to the uniqueness of manufacturing jobs for a male workforce, the capital investments and longterm planning needed, that in turn provide a labor stability that promotes families etc, but it will always swing back to Fiat Money and Big Government as the starting point to undoing this mess.