Robert Merry, historian: ‘Trump doesn’t recognize McKinley’s remarkable turnaround with regard to his views on tariffs’

The king of tariffs, “the Napoleon of protection,” the pioneer of a truly global United States. As Donald Trump threatens to impose tariffs, attempts to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza, and floats the idea of 21st century U.S. expansionism, these are the kinds of labels he might like to hear about himself. But they aren’t about Trump. They actually refer to another U.S. president who governed over a century ago and seems to serve as a model for Trump: William McKinley.

“America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world,” Trump tellingly said in his second first speech as president before alluding to McKinley. “We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley [the United States’s highest peak, located in Alaska and known by its native name of Denali], where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent — he was a natural businessman — and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal.”

Is Trump’s portrayal of McKinley accurate? What is McKinley’s true legacy? EL PAÍS spoke with Robert Merry, a journalist with decades of experience in Washington who later became a historian, and author of a revised biography of McKinley, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century. In a video call from Montana, Merry sheds light on McKinley and his unexpected new connection to Donald Trump.

Question. Why, if it’s possible to know, does Donald Trump start referencing McKinley?

Answer. In his first term, he had Andrew Jackson’s painting on the wall of the Oval Office, not McKinley. He did of course project himself as a pro-tariff, pro-protectionist economic thinker. And so it is not surprising that he would ultimately move onto the man who is probably our greatest protectionist in terms of our presidents. But there was another factor, I believe. McKinley was the last great expansionist in America. He brought the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States and liberated Cuba. And Trump seems to be something of an expansionist, at least philosophically, himself, with his interest in Greenland, for example, the Panama Canal, and, I don’t know whether this is serious, the idea of making Canada the 51st state.

Q. In terms of tariffs, how did McKinley’s relationship to them begin and develop over time?

A. Rutherford B. Hayes was his commanding officer in the Civil War and his great mentor, and Hayes was elected to be president in the same year that McKinley was elected to the House of Representatives. And it was Hayes who basically said, “find an issue, and I think you should embrace tariffs as your singular issue, and you’re going to be more adept and more grounded in that issue than anyone else in Congress.” And he did. He was not a visionary. He didn’t have the vision of American greatness that you might think that Theodore Roosevelt, his successor, had. But he was a very adept, and he mastered the subject, and he became a leading person. He became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which had jurisdiction over tariffs. And so that’s how he became the tariff man.

Q. And how did his tariffs work?

A. He wrote a bill, that was passed in 1890, that instated significantly high tariffs. It kind of got out of control because a lot of people, once you put a big bill before Congress, use it as a Christmas tree to put their own ornaments on. And that did happen. So there were more tariffs on more products than McKinley really wanted. And in many cases, they were higher tariffs than he really agreed with. But he still believed in the basic fundamental principle. Yet, it didn’t do very well politically. Merchants and businesses raised their prices in anticipation of the tariffs going into effect and the result was that there was a tremendous amount of unpopularity that emerged. And McKinley actually lost his seat as a result in the 1890 elections. Out of Congress, the tariffs seemed to be the proximate cause of his defeat, but he refused to back off and said that we were still on the threshold of a major tariff regimen. He became governor of Ohio for two two-year terms, and then became president in 1896. From the White House, he pushed through a bill that restores much of the higher tariffs that had been scrapped under Democratic president Grover Cleveland.

Q. Did he change his mind about them?

A. Yes, he did. And it was quite a remarkable turnaround. He realized as president that America was an amazingly growing and vibrant enterprise nation and that we could produce more goods, agricultural as well as industrial, than any other country. And that as we did, we were going to run out of markets domestically, so we needed to develop overseas markets. And you can’t have those without being a trading country. So he began to change and developed this concept, although it wasn’t his idea, called reciprocity: essentially, we’ll cut our tariffs if you cut yours. He was going about this very aggressively after his reelection in 1900, but less than a year into his second term, he was assassinated.

Q. Back to the present, when Trump is applying tariffs, do you feel that he’s actually learned from McKinley’s experience?

A. First of all, 2025 is not 1898 or 1900. Things are very, very different. There was no income tax in McKinley’s day. So the tariffs were the primary source of federal revenue. Also, the government was much, much smaller than it is today. The other thing I would say is that Trump seems to want to use reciprocity in a much more expansive way. For example, the tariffs that he slapped on Mexico and Canada, wishing them to help more with our border control problems. That would never have been anything that anybody would have considered or even thought remotely appropriate in McKinley’s day.

Q. Moving to what you mentioned on expansionism, how might Trump see McKinley as a model for his own presidency?

A. McKinley really accepted and even helped fashion the idea of what I call non-colonial imperialism. That is to say, developing a navy and a military and an economic force that is so unparalleled that you can have your way in the world, even without colonies. That was very, very important in the beginning of the 20th century and moved us into a new era, which was the Roosevelt era. Trump, as far as I can tell, doesn’t really make that distinction.

Q. But Trump seems to like to wield his will without necessarily having a colonial relationship…

A. It seems to me that what he’s talking about with regard to Greenland is a colonial concept. Also, the Panama Canal. So it’s not absolutely clear exactly how Trump is going to ultimately fashion this foreign policy, but there’s plenty of room for his idea of colonial expansionism.

Q. Some people are also drawing parallels with regard to expanding executive power.

A. McKinley sought to enhance his ability to move events by developing much closer relationships with the press, by communicating much more avidly and much more expansively, and indeed in more detail, with the American people than other presidents had done. He took the first steps towards enhancing the influence and the relative power of the executive branch, but only in ways that could not be construed as being attacks on the other branches. So, yes, McKinley did help move us into the 20th century with regard to presidential action, but not in any threatening way.

Q. Would you say Trump’s actions now can be seen as threatening?

A. He’s pushing the envelope to a tremendous extent with regard to executive prerogative vis-a-vis the Congress. And we’ll see how he deals with the courts, because he’s going to win some and lose some in the Supreme Court.

Q. Overall, do you think Trump’s representation of McKinley is accurate?

A. Trump doesn’t recognize McKinley’s remarkable turnaround with regard to his views on tariffs. He basically concluded that tariffs needed to be reduced in a whole host of areas and to a significant extent in order for us to sell the goods that we were producing in America. Trump doesn’t talk that way and doesn’t pay much attention to that remarkable turnaround.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition