Wikimedia Commons
Twenty-five Democratic-led states sue to challenge President Trump's latest round of tariffs A coalition of 25 Democratic-led states filed suit to block President Trump's newest tariffs, calling them a 'pretext' to replace an earlier round struck down in court. The lawsuit argues the president exceeded his authority in imposing sweeping import taxes without congressional approval. It is the latest legal clash over the administration's trade policy. Analogies The Nullification Crisis: South Carolina Defies the Federal Tariff We, therefore, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain ... that the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities ... are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.
South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification, adopted in convention, November 24, 1832; The Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School → No Taxes but by Consent: The Stamp Act Congress That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives. That the people of these colonies are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great-Britain, and that no taxes ever have been, or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures.
Declaration of Rights of the Stamp Act Congress, New York, October 19, 1765; The Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School → The Candlemakers' Petition: A Satire of Protectionism We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to ours for the production of light, that he absolutely inundates our national market with it at a price fabulously reduced. The moment he shows himself, our trade leaves us--all consumers apply to him ... This rival, who is no other than the Sun, wages war to the knife against us.
Frédéric Bastiat, "Petition of the Manufacturers of Candles, Waxlights, Lamps..." in Economic Sophisms (1845; trans. Patrick James Stirling, 1873); Project Gutenberg ebook #44145 → Civil Disobedience: Refusing an Unjust Tax I heartily accept the motto,--"That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. ... I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night.
Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (originally "Resistance to Civil Government," 1849); Project Gutenberg ebook #71 → King Andrew the First: A President Tramples the Constitution This anonymous Whig broadside answers a President accused of governing by veto and decree. Jackson stands robed and crowned, scepter in one hand and a veto in the other, his royal feet planted on a torn Constitution and the shredded charter of the federal judiciary. The caption brands him a tyrant, 'King Andrew the First' -- the era's sharpest image of an executive who scorns the limits meant to bind him.
"King Andrew the First," anonymous lithograph, c. 1832-33 (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division) → The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbour: A Revolt Against Import Taxes Currier's popular lithograph turns a tax revolt into a founding tableau: Bostonians crowd the wharves by torchlight as men aboard the ships heave chests of dutied East India Company tea into the harbor. It memorializes colonists' refusal to pay a duty on imports levied without their consent -- resistance to an import tax rendered as an act of civic virtue.
Nathaniel Currier, "The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbour," hand-colored lithograph, 1846 (Springfield Museums) → 
.jpg)
