Who was the most protectionist Democratic President?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

An interesting realization I had is that no Democratic President has ever really been a protectionist. In fact the Democratic Party has basically been opposed to tariffs since its foundation with Henry Clay and the Whigs being the original protectionists. Even though a lot of people associate protectionism with a sort of populist politics William Jennings Bryan was a staunch opponent of tariffs, which at the time were viewed as benefiting big business while making goods more unaffordable for the common man, the South has always always been anti-tariff due to the nature of its economy. FDR ran on repealing Smoot-Hawley which he did and Truman started the precursor to the World Trade Organization. JFK and LBJ were most certainly not protectionists either...people often associate the "old left" with a sort of protectionist rust belt Democratic type but really that has never been the case.

So anyway which Democratic president has been most protectionist then?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

An interesting realization I had is that no Democratic President has ever really been a protectionist. In fact the Democratic Party has basically been opposed to tariffs since its foundation with Henry Clay and the Whigs being the original protectionists. Even though a lot of people associate protectionism with a sort of populist politics William Jennings Bryan was a staunch opponent of tariffs, which at the time were viewed as benefiting big business while making goods more unaffordable for the common man, the South has always always been anti-tariff due to the nature of its economy. FDR ran on repealing Smoot-Hawley which he did and Truman started the precursor to the World Trade Organization. JFK and LBJ were most certainly not protectionists either...people often associate the "old left" with a sort of protectionist rust belt Democratic type but really that has never been the case.

So anyway which Democratic president has been most protectionist then?

Jackson.  While the party he helped form was anti-protectionist, he himself was not, and his failure to do quickly move to repeal or amend the 1828 Tariff of Abominations was one of the key factors that led to the Nullification Crisis.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You have to remember that William Jennings Bryan was an "agrarian populist" and thus his views reflected what would be the populist position of the South and West. The Democrats had a long history of agrarian populism dating back to Jackson and to Jefferson through the DRs before that.

What was different though is that Bryan marked the shift whereby government began to be embraced as a tool to empower the downtrodden as opposed to just being seen as a tool for enriching the elites as Jackson and Jefferson had. This didn't necessitate an embrace of protectionism though since the populist/progressive base for the Democrats was still the South and West, whereas with the exception of minority working class enclaves the northern wing of the party was still dominated by rural Jeffersonians and the more lassez faire, less subsidist oriented business interests and middle class (Their counterparts who wanted tariffs and subsidies were Republicans). When both sides of the primary division in the party (simply put the farmers on the one side and lassiez faire types in both the north and the South) are for free trade, the party would reflect such.

Only the rise of union politics and the increasing democratic nature during the Depression and subsequent years of such voters gave rise to the "rustbelt, protectionist Democrat". In short it is a mid 20th century phenomenon.  However, leading economic theories, particular those that underpinned FDR and JFK's economic policy, were heavily wetted to free trade as being a necessary component of the agenda so there was resistance from top to the trend. Only with the Clinton era though do you get an in the tank for business Democrat that dwarfs even the bourbons who had limits (legacy support for limited Gov't for one, with exceptions that nearly always concerned restoring competativeness and entrepreneurship like anti-trust laws). Which is probably as good a reason as any to question the inevitability of Hillary in 2016 as being the nominee.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As for the other side, protectionism was advocated by Hamilton along the lines of the infant-industry argument, but it was not until the 1820's and 1830's that you had a realignment along party and regional lines. In Jefferson's Republican Party you had the divisions between the old harder line Republicans who were free trade and both party leadership/nationalists who weren't so adherent. Jefferson had enacted the embargo, which the former hated. Madison had continued it, then passed a tariff and reinstated the BUS. The arrival of many former Federalists aggrevated the divide and pushed the party towards inevitable division. It was mainly out of this discontented faction that Jackson formed the Democrats and thus the pre-disposition towards free trade from those "agrarian populists" that I mentioned previously.

The real cause of the reallignment in trade politics was the embargo and subsequently the War of 1812, which shifted New England from an Agriculture and merchant economy to an industrial one based around textiles. For a good eight years, those new companies had been shielded and there was a desired to continue it with the Tariff of 1816, which was then amped up to eleven with the Tariff of abombinations. Calhoun becomes a free trader and Webster a protectionist as a result of this regionalization. The Republicans, as a party of the north and the succesor for northern Whigs, thus were the party of protectionism until it was made all to clear it no longer worked in the 1930's. The 20th century saw the GOP seek to unify the commercial types under one banner by bringing in the old bourbon Democrats, in reaction to the embrace of gov't by the left and that plus the growing internationalism post-WW2 helped create the transformation of the GOP to a free trade party, finalized with Reagan's ascent. That event meant it was not just Republican but Conservative to be for free trade.