The McKinley Mandate: Tariffs for Strategic Industry

For most of the nineteenth century the United States grew into the world's leading industrial power behind protective tariffs. Hamilton argued for it in 1791, Clay built a program around it, Lincoln signed it into law, and McKinley made it his life's work. Their reasoning was simple. A country that cannot make things cannot defend itself, and workers forced to compete with subsidized foreign labor will not stay in the middle class for long.

The problem

Decades of offshoring left the country dependent on rivals for things it cannot do without: advanced chips, the active ingredients in common medicines, rare earth processing and ships. In a crisis, each of those is leverage held against us.

Five principles

1. Name the strategic sectors explicitly, using national security and supply chain criteria.
2. Keep protection stable so companies can plan in decades, not news cycles.
3. Pair tariffs with capacity: permitting reform, worker training and infrastructure.
4. Favor partners in our hemisphere for supply chains that cannot come all the way home.
5. Measure success in American jobs, capacity and resilience.

Next

Later briefs in this series will cover shipbuilding, critical minerals and medicine supply chains in detail, with specific legislative proposals.