Talk:Tariff of 1790

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"Hamilton proposed that imported goods be more expensive, which would force Americans to buy more homemade products."

The author of the above sentence doesn't seem to understand the difference between revenue and protective tariffs.

Hamilton proposed that foreign-made (rather than domestic) products incur the tax needs of the federal treasury, and as a result, kept the taxes on domestic manufacturers low (probably zero percent). It is *that* (the fact that domestic manufacturers didn't need to be taxed, along with the fact that foreign products were more expensive because of the taxes) which caused domestic manufacturing to grow.

The tariff rates in question were much too low to force Americans to buy domestic, that's a *protective* tariff, which Hamilton didn't use. He used revenue tariffs. The purpose of the former is to force the purchase of the domestic product, the latter to fatten the federal treasury (and, indirectly, to help domestic manufacturing because they wouldn't have to pay taxes.) Supporters of revenue tariffs (in contrast to supporters of protective tariffs) *love* foreign products, because you need them to pay the taxes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.17.92.193 (talk) 23:08, 8 October 2010 (UTC)