Historical debates on tariffs during the Constitutional Convention 1787
Executive summary
The Constitutional Convention confronted a messy patchwork of state tariffs and retaliatory duties that threatened interstate harmony, prompting delegates to centralize tariff power in the national government as both a revenue source and a way to regulate foreign commerce [1] [2]. Debates at Philadelphia produced the Import-Export Clause and related structural choices that reflected competing regional interests, contested constitutional principles, and a pragmatic tilt toward revenue over protection in the new federal system [3] [4] [5].
1. The immediate problem: tariff chaos under the Articles of Confederation
By 1787 states were imposing duties on one another, levying special entrance and clearance fees, and engaging in what contemporaries called commercial war—conditions that the Confederation Congress identified as defects and that helped trigger the Philadelphia convention [1] [6] [2].
2. Centralizing tariff authority: why the Convention moved to federalize imposts
Delegates pressed to give the national government the sole power to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises" so the Union could speak with one voice in foreign commerce, secure revenue for the federal treasury, and prevent port states from discriminating against inland states by taxing goods merely passing through [4] [2] [7].
3. The Import-Export Clause and a contentious drafting process
The Convention debated several drafts before adopting a standalone prohibition on state tariffs in the Import-Export Clause; an early draft had buried duties among a longer list of state restrictions, but on September 15 the delegates followed the Committee of Style in making the prohibition a separate provision and incorporated amendments adopted earlier that month [3] [8].
4. Madison, the rejected proposal, and the record of votes
James Madison argued against allowing states to use duties to protect local industries—warning that state-level protectionism would perpetuate the commercial problems the Convention sought to cure—but his alternative proposal was rejected by a recorded vote (4–7), reflecting divisions over how far to immunize the federal plan from state interference [3] [8].
5. Regional interests: northern traders and manufacturers vs. southern planters
The tariff debate at the Convention mirrored economic geography: delegates representing trading and nascent manufacturing interests favored federal capacity to impose duties that could support industry, while agrarian and slaveholding regions feared tariffs that would raise the price of imports and confer sectional advantage to seaboard manufacturing centers [9] [2] [10].
6. Revenue first, protection later: the emergent policy posture
Although protectionist instincts existed, the Convention and the early Congress treated tariffs primarily as the essential revenue tool for a solvent federal government; contemporary accounts and later economic histories emphasize that protectionism did not dominate policy in the first decade under the Constitution and only grew as an explicit aim after industrial development accelerated post-War of 1812 [5] [11] [2].
7. The compromise’s consequences: legal structure and long-term politics
The Constitution’s allocation of tariff power—plus explicit limits like the Export Clause—secured national revenue streams and prevented intra-state tariff wars, but it left unresolved sectional tensions that resurfaced in later controversies (the Tariff of 1789, the "tariff of abominations," and the Nullification Crisis), demonstrating how a technical constitutional fix produced enduring political friction [2] [12] [10].
8. Interpretive disputes and hidden agendas in the record
Records of the Convention show both principled constitutional reasoning and narrower economic self-interest; northern and commercial delegates framed centralization in terms of national harmony and foreign diplomacy, while critics worried about concentrated economic power and the diversion of customs revenues—an ambiguity that scholars and contemporary actors exploited in later partisan battles [4] [7] [2].