The original reason the Democratic party was against tariffs was because they were the party of slavery. They didn't want other countries to slap tariffs on their goods and take away the advantage of using cheap slave labor. Democrats maintained their shameful reactionary position against all tariffs as a holdover from those awful years, but they switched the justification to claim that they really care about consumers. Of course now they don't care when those consumers lose their good paying job to outsourcing and have to settle for lower paying service jobs.
TIL slavery was not abolished until after FDR's Presidency.
Learn to read. I said the Democratic party's position on tariffs were born out preserving their advantage from slavery. As Republicans took up the position of using tariffs to build domestic industry, Democrats maintained their reactionary position, only changing the justifications over time. It was never about helping the people, but about keeping the donor class happy, shifting from the slaver interests to the corporate interests.
Southern planters' opposition to tariffs centered around not wanting US tariffs to raise the domestic prices of imported goods from Europe that were manufactured from Southern cotton, as this would diminish domestic demand and also foreign profits, leading to less foreign production from cotton and thus less demand for cotton exports (or so the theory went). The mere fact of slavery wasn't decisive, as Louisiana sugar planters were generally supportive of a protective tariff and favored the Whigs. In fact many cotton planters also supported the Whigs, out of support for internal improvements and a strong bank. Some of the strongest support for the Democrats instead came from the upland back country, including in places like Western Arkansas and Northern Alabama where there were few slaves and little enthusiasm for secession.
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