Tariffs have been a big part of President Donald Trump's second term in the White House. His fascination with tariffs extends to a former American leader with a strong connection to Northeast Ohio: William McKinley, whom Trump calls “the Tariff King.”
McKinley, who moved to Stark County in his twenties, served as a congressman, governor of Ohio and 25th president of the United States, served as Commander-in-Chief from 1897-1901. Like Trump, McKinley was a Republican.
"If you look at McKinley, he was actually a great president, he made the country rich," Trump said on the 2024 presidential campaign trail.
Roll Call Politics, which tracks presidential public events, noted that President Trump has mentioned McKinley at least 18 times in the last five months.
"He was the king of tariffs, that's why I like him,” Trump told a crowd of supporters while campaigning for President in 2024.
“I didn't anticipate that he would become so enamored of President McKinley,” said Robert Merry, who wrote "President McKinley, Author of The American Century."
According to Merry, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America was producing so many goods, the country had to find new markets for American products.
“And that led to his carving out the idea of what he called reciprocity, which is that he would go to other countries and create bilateral pacts or agreements that will reduce our tariffs if you reduce yours,” Merry said.
But reciprocity, Merry said, isn't the only way Trump tackled tariffs.
“He clearly wants to use tariffs as a revenue mechanism,” Merry said.” He wants to use tariffs as a bludgeon to beat up on other countries on matters that are not related to revenue at all.”
Some examples include Trump's threats of tariffs to stop the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. and to level the playing field For U.S. businesses in the global marketplace.
Another author who has some perspective on McKinley and the current president's fascination with him is Karl Rove. A former advisor to President George W. Bush, Rove wrote "The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters." Rove said tariffs were essential for the government's survival under McKinley.
“Income tax was unconstitutional until the 16th Amendment in 1913, so the government had depended for a long time on two principal sources of income,” Rove said. “The largest was the tariff.”
The environment for tariffs has changed, Rove said.
"We live in a different time. The government takes up a much larger share of the economy and it is simply impossible to have tariffs of the nature that we had in the gilded age," he said.
But Trump touts the message of a new Golden Age, ushered in through tariffs.
At a 2022 campaign event in Youngstown, Trump appealed to the Ohio crowd with a nod to their native son.
"Teddy Roosevelt goes down as a great president, but William McKinley made our country rich as hell so that Teddy went out and spent a lot of money on doing a lot of good things," Trump told the crowd.
It's hard to gauge whether Trump's frequent mentions have raised McKinley's stock in Northeast Ohio.
Kimberly A. Kenny, executive director of the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum near McKinley's final resting place in Canton, said in an email she's hopeful interest will open more eyes to McKinley's legacy.
“Although we have not seen an increase in visitation since the inauguration, we are hopeful that we might see additional visitors as people plan spring break and summer vacations," she wrote. "Traffic to our website has definitely increased, which indicates that people are interested in learning more about our president, which is remarkable 124 years after his death.”
One of Trump's first acts of his second term as the 47th President was to officially change was the name of Mount Denali in Alaska back to Mount McKinley. Trump mentioned it during his Inaugural address.
Now, more than a century after McKinley's passing, the world waits to see how the ideas of The Tariff King play out in 2025.
