# McKinley Tariff The **McKinley Tariff** (formally the Tariff Act of 1890), named for its champion Representative — and future President — [[William McKinley]], raised average duties on dutiable imports to nearly 50 percent — the ratio of duties collected to dutiable imports rose from 46.3% in 1891 to 49.6% in 1893 in the US International Trade Commission's historical series, and the commonly cited statutory average is 49.5% — among the highest protective tariffs in U.S. history. It embodied the late-nineteenth-century Republican Party's foundational commitment to protectionism: high tariffs to shield domestic manufacturers from foreign competition, build American industry, and (in the era before the income tax) fund the federal government. The Act also introduced "reciprocity" provisions allowing the president to retaliate against countries that taxed American goods. ## Political backlash The tariff was deeply unpopular with consumers, who blamed it for rising prices, and it contributed to a catastrophic Republican defeat in the 1890 midterm elections — McKinley himself lost his House seat. It was superseded by the Democratic Wilson–Gorman Tariff of 1894 and, after McKinley won the presidency, by the still-higher Dingley Tariff of 1897. The episode is a classic case study in the political economy of protection: concentrated benefits to favored producers, diffuse costs to consumers, and the electoral risk a governing party runs when the price effects become salient. ## Significance for the knowledge base The McKinley Tariff is a key historical anchor for the modern debate over tariffs and protectionism. McKinley is the explicit hero of the contemporary protectionist revival — repeatedly invoked by Donald Trump as a model of a president who used tariffs to make the country "rich" — and the 1890 Act is frequently cited in analyses of the Trump-era return to aggressive trade barriers. It illustrates both the long Republican pedigree of protectionism (which the party largely abandoned during its free-trade, neoliberal decades (see [[Neoliberalism]]) before reverting under Trump) and the recurring political hazard that import taxes raise consumer prices in ways voters notice. ## See Also - [[William McKinley]] — namesake and protectionist icon - [[Neoliberalism]] — the free-trade era the GOP later embraced and then abandoned - [[Tariffs]] — the policy instrument