President Trump calls President McKinley’s tariffs “magnificent,” presenting them as a tool to rebuild American industry and ensure prosperity. He says import taxes will spark a boom worthy of the Gilded Age, but they can also break stubborn partisan gridlock while healing divisions such as those that persist after the Civil War.

On “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Trump said that America “had so much money” in McKinley’s time that “we didn’t know what to do.” He stressed that Congress should create a commission to manage the surplus and suggested that tariffs might even raise enough revenue to replace the income tax, which “foolishly” replaced it.

“Our country was relatively wealthiest in the 1880s and 1890s,” Trump said. He called McKinley a “tariff king” who “spoke magnificently about tariffs” and summarized his policies. “We will not allow the enemy to come in,” Trump said, “and take our jobs, take our factories, take our workers and take our families, unless they pay a heavy price – and the big price is customs duties. »

The political and economic landscapes of America today resemble those of the late 19th century in many ways. Factions fight over a shrinking pie, their differences seemingly irreconcilable. The parties exchange narrow majorities on Capitol Hill. Two presidents won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote in 12 years, 1876 and 1888, as they did 16 years apart in 2000 and 2016.

When McKinley was the Republican nominee for president in 1896, America was in the grip of a long depression, characterized by unemployment, wage stagnation, and inflation. Voters had benefited from the McKinley Tariff of 1890, passed when the Civil War major was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and wanted more of the policy.

President Cleveland remained neutral in the race for office. This allowed “sound money Democrats,” those who support the gold standard, to cross party lines. McKinley, “The Napoleon of Protection,” crushed the populist Democrat, Congressman William Jennings Bryan, by 4.7 percent nationally. It was by far the largest margin in 34 years, and Republicans dominated Washington almost uninterrupted until 1932.

A few days after the 1896 election, Senator Marcus Hanna of Ohio, chairman of the Republican National Committee, rented McKinley Democrats in the sun. He said they had ignored “the demagogic question” by presenting the elections as “the masses against the classes”, giving a mandate to unite behind the tariffs.

The Sun asked Hanna about President-elect McKinley’s “current attitude toward tariffs.” Hannah responded with an anecdote from President Lincoln, “repeated by the major,” that a man’s legs “should be long enough to reach the ground.” McKinley would seek “to obtain tariffs sufficient to generate revenue, reasonable protection of American labor, and fair return on invested capital.”

“The depression of the last four years,” McKinley said in his inaugural address, “has fallen with particular severity on the great mass of the working people of the country. Tariffs quickly began to ease their burden by guaranteeing “reciprocity” from other countries, meaning they would only sell to Americans as long as they gave them equal access to their markets.

“We were so rich,” Trump told Mr. Rogan of the McKinley era, “because we were taxing other people to come here and take our jobs, and China is doing it,” selling cars to Americans while by refusing to let American automakers sell. there. The word “tariff,” he said, is the “prettiest word” in the dictionary — and sometimes just invoking it works.

Trump said communist China’s automakers were planning “the largest factory in the world” in Mexico while “we’re trying to get cars built in the United States.” He said he promised to respond with “100 or 200 percent tariffs on every car” imported if the project went ahead, making them “unsaleable in the United States.” Beijing canceled the plant.

In 1900, McKinley ran with a “dinner bucket full” and scored an even bigger victory in a rematch against Bryan. McKinleynomics soothed the resentments and hatreds that depression had exacerbated, using the same standard advice for getting new pets along: make sure there’s enough to eat.

One of McKinley’s re-election posters boasted of “promises kept.” Another showed him standing atop a gold coin, supported by industry veterans, workers and waste men. They were united under the banner of “prosperity.” Throughout his term, the 25th president worked to “heal the nation’s wounds,” a goal Lincoln had set in his second inaugural address, and the tariffs helped to heal.

A rising tide, as President Kennedy described it, lifted all boats. It hasn’t always been smooth, fair, or bloodless sailing. Unions fought for higher wages and better conditions. Anarchists killed people, including McKinley in 1901. Some companies hired strikebreakers. Others, like Hanna – who gave rent-free land to miners and settled a strike within hours – offered incentives. assassination,

McKinley was the most popular president since Lincoln, using his political capital to erase divisions born of need, whether due to race, region, faction, or class. Tariffs played a major role in giving him that chance. Trump can follow the same model, creating a more unified nation by using tariffs to ensure everyone’s dinner bucket is full.