McKinley Tariff

[1] The tariff raised the average duty on imports to almost 50%, an increase designed to protect domestic industries and workers from foreign competition, as promised in the Republican platform.

Although this delegation of power had the appearance of being an unconstitutional violation of the nondelegation doctrine, it was upheld by the Supreme Court in Field v. Clark in 1892, as authorizing the executive to act merely as an "agent" of Congress, rather than as a lawmaker itself.

[6] In the preceding 20 years, tariff rates had been raised and dropped multiple times on tin-plates with no change in import levels, and domestic production had remained inconsequential.

Through a multitude of complicated tariff schedule revisions, the Act made almost all woolen goods subject to the maximum duty rate.

[14] In the 1892 presidential election, Harrison was soundly defeated by Grover Cleveland, and the Senate, House, and Presidency were all under Democratic control.

[16] Tariffs (taxes on foreign goods entering a country) served two purposes for the United States in the late 19th century.

One was to raise revenue for the federal government, and the other was to protect domestic manufacturers and workers from foreign competition, known as protectionism.

For the sake of holding the party line, the Republicans felt obligated to pass stronger tariff legislation.

Both parties agreed that the surplus needed to lessen but disagreed about whether to raise or lower tariffs to accomplish the same goal.

[19] Douglas Irwin's 1998 paper[20] examines the validity of the opposing tariff hypotheses posed by Republicans and Democrats in 1890.

He concluded that the tariff hastened the development of domestic tinplate production by about a decade but argued that the benefit to this industry was outweighed by the overall cost to consumers.