Has the (deep) south always supported free trade?

[darklordoftech]

From Jefferson to the Nullification Crisis to supporting the 16th amendment (as an alternative to tariffs) to Buckley/Goldwater to Reagan to the Bushes to Gingrich, has the south, or at least the deep south, consistently supported free trade?

[RINO Tom]

*Paging NC Yankee*

From my very simple understanding, it largely has.  However, this has been for very different reasons and with some exceptions.  The South's support for free trade in the 1800s largely had to do with the slave power's desire for cotton trading with Britain and partly because many Southerners viewed many Northerners' support for protective tariffs as an explicitly pro-Northern-industry policy that targeted Southern "enterprise."  Also, keep in mind that for most of the late 19th Century and at least until the 1940s, American labor unions supported free trade, and this is a huge component of why people like FDR were free traders, and I think the South more or less just kept towing the party line on the issue (though I still think the region benefited from free trade).  It wasn't until post-WWII America emerged as a true economic super power that free trade came to be favored by most in the business community and became more associated with "conservative" thinking, IMO, but this also coincided with the South becoming much more commercial in nature and therefore conservative in economic thinking.  This is a blurry cutoff and all, but I've read that before WWII, the labor community saw free trade as benefiting them because they wanted to get American goods out there to sell to the world but sharply changed their tunes once the effect of free trade on the US economy meant more imports and fewer exports.  By this time, the South was a very, very different place and was supporting free trade for a largely different reason.  As I said, I'd wait for NC Yankee's response, though.

[darklordoftech]

*Paging NC Yankee*

From my very simple understanding, it largely has.  However, this has been for very different reasons and with some exceptions.  The South's support for free trade in the 1800s largely had to do with the slave power's desire for cotton trading with Britain and partly because many Southerners viewed many Northerners' support for protective tariffs as an explicitly pro-Northern-industry policy that targeted Southern "enterprise."  Also, keep in mind that for most of the late 19th Century and at least until the 1940s, American labor unions supported free trade, and this is a huge component of why people like FDR were free traders, and I think the South more or less just kept towing the party line on the issue (though I still think the region benefited from free trade).  It wasn't until post-WWII America emerged as a true economic super power that free trade came to be favored by most in the business community and became more associated with "conservative" thinking, IMO, but this also coincided with the South becoming much more commercial in nature and therefore conservative in economic thinking.  This is a blurry cutoff and all, but I've read that before WWII, the labor community saw free trade as benefiting them because they wanted to get American goods out there to sell to the world but sharply changed their tunes once the effect of free trade on the US economy meant more imports and fewer exports.  By this time, the South was a very, very different place and was supporting free trade for a largely different reason.  As I said, I'd wait for NC Yankee's response, though.

This is a good answer.

[Orser67]

Prior to WW2, the Deep South was the strongest base in the U.S. for free trade-ism; the lack of a manufacturing base meant that they didn't benefit from protective tariffs, and their dependence on exporting cotton and other goods meant that they suffered from any policy that worked to restrict trade. The tariff was always controversial, but it (re-)emerged as one of the top issues in the period after the the War of 1812, when Democratic-Republicans like Clay imposed a protective tariff.

Between 1828 and the Civil War, the Deep South generally voted Democratic, and the Democrats were generally more in favor of free trade. Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic, and free trade was perhaps the most important policy favored by Democrats. Cleveland and Wilson both presided over reductions in the tariff, while Republican presidents generally raised the tariff or kept it in place (Taft being the lone exception).

I'm honestly less knowledgeable about the tariff after WW2, but my understanding is that even parts of the Deep South adopted pro-free trade views after World War 2 for various reasons, with the big one being the abandonment of isolationist/non-interventionist views.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It comes down to benefit, who would benefit from protectionism in any given period and what was their relative political power in the context of the time.

The only period when there was a protectionist element was when the textile industries became under threat in the later part of the 20th century.

Rural NC has long had a latent protectionist element and it played a role in keeping NC Republican in the 1990's, electing Richard Burr over Clinton's CoS in 2004 and in electing Donald Trump. The decline of furniture, textiles and tobacco has hammered rural NC and given it a very rust belt kind of feeling. These same sentiments exist in and have long existed in Appalachia as a part and parcel to isolationism but they were often isolated in terms of Southern Politics.

When you get to the Deep South, you have parts of SC that have similar situations and also parts of rural GA. But the think to note is that as the parties realign, these areas will be completely outvoted by free trade oriented suburbanites (think VA).

So yes, there are and have been pockets of protectionism in the South and Deep South, particularly in the last few years, but the region as a whole and even down to the individual states themselves have been and will likely remain pro-free trade.

Big Agra tends to be pro-free trade in almost all its iterations, and also pro-cheap labor. Big Oil is likewise. And in terms of emerging industries like finance, tech and most professionals are going to be pro-free trade as well. So the dominant economic sectors in the South have and remain pro-free trade, even if those industries change and the former ones tend to create protectionist sentiments in areas that are decimated by its decline.

[VPH]

A lot of the Deep South yes, but if you look at parts of South Carolina and Northern Georgia, there was more of a protectionist tilt because of how textiles suffered from foreign trade in more modern times.