President Ronald Reagan’s thoughts on tariffs:

What were Reagan’s thoughts on the 1986 Amnesty Bill?

Our trading partners fired the first shots in this tariff war—slapping taxes on American goods while we played nice! Free trade’s the dream, but we can’t just sit here getting fleeced, watching the American worker get crushed. It’s time to fight back! Reciprocal tariffs? You bet—they’re fair, they’re tough, and they’re exactly what we need to level the playing field!

@stillgray Reciprocal tariffs at only 50% of the calculated values of tariffs already imposed by other countries is a far cry from what he was discussing.

Different time and different circumstances. When he was making this statement, the manufacturing represented 40% of the economy. It’s not even a sliver of this now. Also, Reagan used Tariffs to protect Harley Davidson as President.

Here’s what could get more expensive with Trump’s new tariffs.

I see it differently. One thing is to tariff for the sake of tariffing and another one is to match the other country's tariff. For the latter, mutual agreement to have no tariffs can be achieved. There should be no reason why our products get tariff by another country and yet we don't tariff their products

Way different time.

He put tariffs on a number of items - steel, machine tools, motorcycles - and also used import quotas to great effect, saving the American car industry!

Why aren’t the countries fucking us over with their insanely inflated tariffs falling apart?

And he was wrong

Regardless we are long past the point in time he is discussing. Our home grown industry has fled to foreign markets to produce their goods.