McKinley Tariff

The McKinley Tariff of 1890 set the average ad valorem tariff rate for imports to the United States at 48.4%, and protected manufacturing. Its chief proponent was Congressman and future President William McKinley.

In return for its passage, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was given Republican support. It raised the prices in the United States under Benjamin Harrison, which may have cost him his presidency in the next elections.

The tariff was detrimental to the American farmers. It drove up the prices of farm equipment (since wages and imported components were more expensive) and failed to halt sliding agricultural prices, possibly since there wasn't much competition with imported goods since American agricultural produce was already cheaper than imports.

The following agrarian resentment would help give rise to the Free Silver movement and the Populist Party.

The McKinley Tariff Act raised tariffs and brought new trouble to farmers, who were forced to buy high-priced, protected products from American manufacturers but sell their own products into highly competitive, unprotected world markets. This upset many rural voters, who voted many Republicans out of office in the next congressional elections (1890).

The McKinley Tariff was a direct contributing factor to the Panic of 1893 which resulted in the defeat of Democrats in the 1894 Congressional mid-term elections. The reverberations of the Panic were still being felt during the Presidential Election of 1896 which helped sweep Republican William McKinley into the White House.

Sources

• Ayala, César J. (1999). American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807847887..
• McKinley Tariff, Ohio History Central, July 1, 2005.