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

by Douglas A. Irwin

In 1908, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie publicly stated that the tariff on imported iron and steel could be safely eliminated without any significant effect on domestic production. He argued that the iron and steel industry was well past the point of being an infant industry, and the industry could fend for itself without fear of foreign competition. Steel producers no longer needed protection “because steel is now produced cheaper here than anywhere else, notwithstanding the higher wages paid per man,” Carnegie (1908, 202) argued. “That there is a cult who regard [the doctrine of protection] as sacrosanct and everlasting, none knows better than the writer; but its members are few and not likely to increase, since our country has admittedly developed and gained, and is to continue gaining, manufacturing supremacy in one department after another until it reaches a position where free trade in manufactures would be desirable for it, all the markets of the world open to her, and hers to the world,” he continued. “Our difficulty will then be to get other nations to agree to free trade.”