Trump’s affinity for America’s “Guilded Age”-Do you want to go back?

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   Credence2posted 5 weeks ago

   I kept wondering why Trump was so set on past president William McKinley who was in office from 1897-1901. During his first term he was set on Andrew Jackson as his hero. Jackson was a bit of a scoundrel in my book, but both former presidents received average to above average ratings by historians.
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   “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept,” Trump said days after taking office. “It’s fine. It’s OK. But it would have been very much better.”
   
   “It was the Gilded Age, a time of rapid population growth and transformation from an agricultural economy toward a sprawling industrial system, when poverty was widespread while barons of phenomenal wealth, like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, held tremendous sway over politicians who often helped boost their financial empires.”
   
   (Who does that remind you of today?)
   
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   McKinley’s administration was during the heart of what was known as America’s Guilded Age 1870-1913.
   
   Characterized by:
   
   President McKinley and his preference for tariffs and protectionism.
   
   “Experts on the era say Trump is idealizing a time rife with government and business corruption, social turmoil and inequality. They argue he’s also dramatically overestimating the role tariffs played in stimulating an economy that grew mostly due to factors other than the U.S. raising taxes on imported goods.” And Gilded Age policies, they maintain, have virtually nothing to do with how trade works in a globalized, modern economy.”
   
   Dartmouth College economics professor Douglas Irwin said Trump advocating for modern tariffs by pointing to the 1890s is flawed. “We did grow rapidly in the late 19th century,” he said. “But it’s a stretch to attribute it to tariffs.”
   
   The Gilded Age featured extraordinary wealth for a small class of people that largely obscured rampant poverty for many other Americans. The name comes from a 1873 novel, co-written by Mark Twain, which satirized the greed and deceit of the era’s government and politicians.
   
   Interesting comments, worthy of note.
   
   No Federal Income tax
   
   “But the president nonetheless signed a Day 1 executive order calling for the creation of the External Revenue Service to “collect tariffs, duties, and other foreign trade-related revenues.” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested Trump’s goal there was “to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay.”
   
   
   “But Trump differs with McKinley in using tariffs as a “bludgeon to get other countries to do our bidding on efforts that have nothing to do with revenue, or economic matters or trade.” The president has done that with Canada and Mexico, using tariff threats to try to force those countries to take harder lines against drug smuggling and illegal immigration.”
   
   (Did not Trump say that he would impose tariffs on nations doing business with Venezuela? What is that for?)
   
   “In that speech on Sept. 5, 1901, McKinley said, “A policy of goodwill and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times. Measures of retaliation are not.”
   
   Has Trump figured that out yet?
   
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   This period was marked by American imperialism and territorial expansion, where Great Powers trading smaller islands nations around like pieces on a chess board regardless of the will of the people who inhabit them. Are we not under Trump revisiting those ideas?
   
   A period defined as the expropriation of land from indigenous people, a period of vicious racism, discrimination and terror confirmed and codified by the Plessy vs. Ferguson SC ruling of 1896.
   
   I wouldn’t want to live in those times, they were not for me….
   
   So much for the sneak peek, you will have to read the article for the details.
   
   https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariff … b5baa774b6

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