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In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, then-candidate Donald Trump made waves when he declared that "the most beautiful word...in the dictionary today...is the word 'tariff'—it's more beautiful than 'love.'" While this humorous comment was a bit hyperbolic, the underlying sentiment was not. President-elect Trump campaigned on the promise of raising tariffs across the board, and he has a mandate from his Midwestern constituents to deliver protection and prosperity.
While the fight for Treasury Secretary has reached a fever pitch, whoever is chosen for the role will likely be far more favorable to tariffs than former treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was back in 2016; the same could also be said for vice president-elect JD Vance, a staunch supporter of tariffs, in comparison to Mike Pence, a devotee of free trade. Furthermore, former U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer—the most vocal and effective defender of economic patriotism from his first term—is expected to play a critical role implementing Trump's economic agenda regardless of where he lands in the new administration.
While mainstream economists claim that tariffs lead to inflation, cronyism, and stagnation, they misunderstand the fundamental motivations driving economic patriotism today.
First, economic patriots value relative national power over absolute economic efficiency. In an era of great-power competition and an emerging multipolar world, tariffs serve as economic leverage to advance American interests as rivals seek to undermine our industrial base, which is why the Biden administration kept and expanded Trump's tariffs on Chinese-made goods.
Second, economic patriots understand the indispensable link between economic independence for "essential, particularly military supplies," as George Washington noted, and political independence. As the COVID pandemic demonstrated in 2020, it's risky to rely on our chief geopolitical adversary for necessities like pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, rare earth minerals, and more.
While international trade and cooperation produce many benefits that should be encouraged, there are certain key sectors relating to health care, technology, energy, and national security where on-shoring or friend-shoring are necessary to preserve our national sovereignty.
Third, economic patriots believe that innovation often takes place where things are actually made. By decoupling innovation from production, we risk losing out on future technological advancements. As former Intel CEO Andy Grove observed about offshoring, "Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today's 'commodity' manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow's emerging industry."
Contrary to popular belief, economic patriots are not luddites. While they look back to the halcyon days of manufacturing in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland with admiration, their focus is just as much on developing the technologies of the future for the benefit of American families and workers as it is on protecting American manufacturing jobs. That is why today's titans of technology, like Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel, have aligned themselves with the Republican Party, much like the industrial barons of the 19th century did.
Finally, it's important to remember that the bipartisan turn towards economic patriotism that began under Donald Trump in 2016 has its roots in a venerable tradition, called the American School, that dates to the time of the Founding. In the hopes of achieving economic independence from the British colonial system, treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton published his "Report on Manufacturers" in 1791. It argued that "Not only the wealth; but the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavour to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply."
To achieve these ends, Hamilton proposed a program of tariffs, subsidies, internal improvements, and a national bank. While the subsidies were strongly rejected, Hamilton's overall agenda triumphed and gave birth to the American School. Led by a father-son publishing duo, Matthew Carey—Hamilton's economic adviser—and Henry Charles Carey—Abraham Lincoln's economic adviser—provided the intellectual heft and social networks that contributed to the school's success.
Based in Philadelphia, Henry Carey hosted weekly cocktail parties called "vespers" for leading industrialists, diplomats, journalists, and poets in the mid- to late-19th century, galvanizing political support for economic patriotism within the Republican Party. Between the Civil War and Word War I, Republicans dominated presidential politics and achieved over 4 percent annual economic growth during a period of high tariffs, infrastructure investment, and little to no taxes or regulations. The achievements were so pivotal to America's rise as a great power that industrialist Joseph Wharton made the lead gift to create the business school at the University of Pennsylvania—Donald Trump's alma mater—to promote the American School.
With Trump and Vance at the helm of American economic policy and a new ecosystem of conservative think tanks and journals like American Compass, American Affairs, and American Moment promoting new policy ideas and personnel rooted in the American School, the nation is undergoing a transformation of political economy that could come to define the 21st century much as it did the 19th century. Instead of lamenting the loss of neoliberalism, Americans must reckon with the promises—and risks—of economic patriotism.
John A. Burtka IV is the President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the author of Gateway to Statesmanship: Selections from Xenophon to Churchill.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
