“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation, and the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been.”

Public remarks defending the reciprocal tariffs framework

America is vastly wealthier today than in the tariff era Trump glorifies. Inflationadjusted GDP per capita was $4,803 in 1870 and $10,108 in 1913, versus $58,487 as of 2022, roughly six to twelve times higher, per the Maddison Project data cited by FactCheck.org. By any standard measure, the U.S. was not 'proportionately the wealthiest' then. Economic historians reject the idea that tariffs drove Gilded Age growth. Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth, the leading historian of U.S. trade policy, found growth was driven by labor force expansion, immigration and capital accumulation, with tariffs 'probably not a key factor' and at best a 'third or fourth order' influence whose net effect may even have been negative.

CNN documented this as one of 100 false claims from Trump's first 100 days, noting he never defined 'proportionately the wealthiest' and that economists say the claim fails by any standard measure. The pre-income-tax tariff system Trump praises also could not fund a modern government: customs duties supplied just 1.7% of federal receipts in fiscal 2024. "That tariffs coincided with rapid growth in the late nineteenth century does not imply a causal relationship." — Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth economist and historian of U.S. trade policy (NBER working paper, quoted by FactCheck.org)