Brian Domitrovic, Contributor I write about history, economics,
and the supply-side revolution Every nation has its “founding
myth,” as we are apt to hear from post-modern quarters. But is
this ever true when it comes to our economic history. In
curricula from K-12 to history graduate school, it is staple
fare that as a new nation in the early nineteenth century, the
United States nurtured its “infant industry” into adulthood by
having a protective tariff that kept out cheap mass-made
European goods. After a century of trade protectionism, the
story goes, U.S. industry was so strong that it was the most
productive in the world. You can find this argument everywhere
in historical scholarship and commentary, from textbook to
shining sea. There is no need to name names; if you’re someone
in American historiography, you’ve made or otherwise acquiesced
to this argument. And yet it has never rung true in economics.
Free trade is a major verity in that discipline, and for good
reason. The case for it has been made n