Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. This is The Wall Builder Show, taken on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And we're going to get some history today on a topic. I never thought I'd be able to get the history on, and that is tariffs. Hot topic in the culture

right now, and Bill Federer is with us to give us some of that background. I'm Rick Green. We'll

have David Barton and Tim Barton with us a little later in the program. But Bill Federer

joining us now to talk about the history of tariffs. Love you, brother. Appreciate your time today,

man. Thanks for coming on. Well, hey, Rick, great to be with you. Oh, man, I'm telling you, this is going to be a fun topic

today because normally when we're talking economics or taxes, everybody's falling asleep.

But right now, tariffs has everybody's attention. And so David Tim said, man, we got to get Bill Federer.

They'd seen some of the things you had already given some of the history on tariffs and all

that and said, man, let's get Bill on and get an education.

So, bro, I'm just going to throw it at you a real easy one. I mean, tariffs, are they

constitutional and are they good or bad economically and take it away, bro? Yeah, well, they are

constitutional. Article 1, Section 8 authorizes the federal government to collect duties and imposts.

To pay the debts provide for the common defense and the general welfare of the United States,

duties and imposts is another name for tariffs. And this was the number one way the federal government

raised its money for a century and a half. Matter of fact, the second

bill, George Washington signed was the Tariff Act of 1789, which imposed a 5% tariff on all imports.

And Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of Treasury, and what's he supposed to do, raise revenue

for the federal government, and since revenue he supposed to do, raise revenue for the federal government.

And since revenue came from tariffs, and you had foreign governments wanting to avoid the

tariffs, they would smuggle stuff into America by taking their ship to another place instead

of going into a port. And so Alexander Hamilton started the Coast Guard to catch these

smugglers. And since the fastest ship of the day was called a cutter, these were called revenue

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