Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy (Markets and Governments in Economic History)

by Douglas A. Irwin

As the United States moved toward war, Britain was showing the first signs of weakening. Unlike Jefferson’s embargo three years earlier, the non-importation policy starting in March 1811 coincided with an economic slump in Britain. Although the extent to which the ban on imports exacerbated the recession is uncertain, British manufacturers believed that ending non-importation would increase demand for their goods. Unemployed workers in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and other industrial cities sent dozens of petitions to Parliament demanding repeal of the Orders in Council so that the United States would end its non-importation policy.131 Already suffering under heavy taxes due to the war against France, Britain did not welcome the prospect of another war in North America. The weak economy and pressure from labor and industry helped persuade the British government to relax its policy toward neutral shipping. On June 23, 1812, Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh announced the suspension of the Orders in Council that had been an irritant to Anglo-American relations for so long. As Castlereagh conceded in his diary, “One does not like to own that we are forced to give way to our manufacturers.”132 The apparent vindication of the Republican policy of commercial pressure was an illusion, to some extent, because the policy worked only when it coincided with a recession in Britain that was not itself the result of US trade policies.133

Great example of correlation is not causation