Free Trade vs Protectionism

[Polsci]

To be fair to protectionism, America only really got into free trade during Grover Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms, and even them they were only marginal and ineffective.  Only in the 20's did it start showing up again and Calvin Coolidge was against lower tariffs.  It was a major Republican belief up until the second world war.  If protectionism prevented business from doing business, then it is hard to see how the United States was able to decisively enter world war one or two.  During McKinley's administration the budget was doing so good he actually raised the tariff to reduce the money the fed was taking in [because back in those days our government was run only on tariff revenue] and so it worked while also acting as an incentive to move factories to the U.S. and build in the U.S.  The trick of protectionism is that it says you can be a foreign company, and as long as you produce in the U.S. you can keep your money.  So instead of moving one factory to another location, you build another factory to supplement the first one.  Pure protectionism doesn't work and I personally prefer fair trade, but I had to take a protectionist stance for the sake of argument.