In 1890, two landmark bills passed and were signed into law by Republican president Benjamin Harrison. That year, both the Sherman Antitrust Act and the McKinley Tariff simultaneously defined American antitrust law and established a historic tariff to protect American producers. This was no coincidence. For Republicans in the post-Civil War era, tariffs and industrialization were top priorities—but protectionism risked creating or strengthening industrial monopolies by insulating domestic firms from foreign competition. The discipline once provided by foreign firms needed to come from elsewhere: antitrust enforcement.
The U.S. is facing a similar challenge today: Tariffs are back after years of globalization let our antitrust muscles go soft, as the enforcer’s job was done by foreign competitors, with considerable consequences. In agriculture, for example, tariffs have walled off the economy from foreign imports and therefore muted competition for key inputs including fertilizers and equipment, putting the squeeze on America’s farmers. Across the economy, the same antitrust logic that applied in the Gilded Age applies today: tariffs and trustbusting must go hand-in-hand.
If imported products become more expensive because of tariffs, the thinking went, domestic producers would face less pressure to lower prices, innovate, or expand output. This logic built the case for antitrust enforcement against some of the most powerful companies in the country at the time, including Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, and the meatpackers. For Republicans, antitrust was the pragmatic response to the inevitable loss of competition created by the tariffs. Indeed, some historians argue the first antitrust law, the Sherman Act of 1890, partly functioned as a political safety valve, allowing Republicans to preserve the tariff system while responding to popular anti-monopoly sentiment.
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