President Trump is praising President McKinley’s tariffs as “beautiful,” casting them as a tool to rebuild American industry and deliver prosperity. He says taxes on imports will unleash a Gilded Age-style boom, but they can also break the stubborn partisan stalemate while healing divisions such as those lingering after the Civil War.

On “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Trump said that America “had so much money” in McKinley’s era that “we didn’t know what to do.” He noted that Congress had to set up a commission to deal with the surplus and suggested that tariffs might even raise enough revenue to replace the income tax, which “stupidly” replaced it.  

“Our country was the richest, relatively, in the 1880s and 1890s,” Trump said. He called McKinley “the Tariff King” who “spoke beautifully of tariffs,” and summarized his policy. “We will not allow the enemy to come in,” Trump said, “and take our jobs and take our factories and take our workers and take our families unless they pay a big price — and the big price is tariffs.”

America’s political and economic landscapes today resemble those of the late 19th Century in many ways. Factions fighting over a shrinking pie, their differences seeming irreconcilable. The parties trading narrow majorities on Capitol Hill. Two presidents winning the Electoral College but losing the popular vote in 12 years, 1876 and 1888, as they did 16 years apart in 2000 and 2016.

When McKinley was the GOP presidential nominee in 1896, America was in the teeth of the Long Depression, characterized by unemployment, stagnant wages, and inflation. Voters had benefited from the McKinley Tariff of 1890, passed when the Civil War major was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and wanted more of the policy.

President Cleveland stayed neutral in the race to fill his job. This sanctioned fellow “sound-money Democrats,” those backing the gold standard, to cross party lines. McKinley, “The Napoleon of Protection,” crushed the populist Democrat, Congressman William Jennings Bryan, by 4.7 percent nationwide. It was, by far, the largest margin in 34 years and Republicans dominated Washington almost unbroken until 1932.

Days after the 1896 election, Senator Marcus Hanna of Ohio, chairman of the Republican National Committee, praised McKinley Democrats to the Sun. He said they’d ignored “the demagogic issue” framing the election as “the masses against the classes,” delivering a mandate for uniting behind tariffs.

The Sun asked Hanna what President-Elect McKinley’s “present attitude on the tariff” was. Hannah responded with an anecdote from President Lincoln, “repeated by the Major,” that a man’s legs “should be long enough to reach the ground.” McKinley would seek “sufficient tariff for revenue and the reasonable protection of American labor and a fair remuneration to invested capital.”

“The depression of the past four years,” McKinley said in his inaugural address, “has fallen with especial severity upon the great body of toilers of the country.” Tariffs soon began to ease their burden by ensuring “reciprocity” from other countries, meaning they’d sell to Americans only so long as they gave them equal access to their markets.

“We were so rich,” Trump told Mr. Rogan of the McKinley era, “because we were taxing other people for coming in and taking our jobs, and China does it,” selling cars to Americans while refusing to let American automakers sell over there. The word “tariff,” he said, is the “most beautiful word” in the dictionary — and sometimes, just invoking it works.

Trump said that Communist China’s automakers were planning “the biggest plant in the world” in Mexico while “we’re trying to get cars built in the United States.” He said he promised to respond with “100 or 200 percent tariffs on every car” imported if the project went forward, making them “unsalable in the United States.” Beijing canceled the plant.

In 1900, McKinley ran on a “full dinner pail” and won an even larger victory in a rematch against Bryan. McKinleynomics was soothing resentments and hatreds that the depression had exacerbated, employing the same advice that’s standard for getting new pets to get along: Make sure there’s plenty to eat.

One of McKinley’s reelection posters boasted of “promises kept.” Another showed him standing atop a gold coin, supported by veterans, workingmen, and barrens of industry. They were united under the banner of “prosperity.” Throughout his term, the 25th president worked to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” a goal Lincoln set in his Second Inaugural Address, and tariffs helped with the healing.

A rising tide, as President Kennedy described, lifted all boats. The sailing wasn’t always smooth, equitable, or bloodless. Unions fought for higher wages and better conditions. Anarchists killed people, including McKinley in 1901. Some businesses hired strikebreakers. Others, like Hanna — who gave mineworkers rent-free land and settled a strike in hours — offered incentives.At the time of his assassination,

McKinley was the most popular president since Lincoln, using his political capital to erase divisions born out of want, whether due to race, region, faction, or class. Tariffs played a major role in giving him that chance. Trump can follow the same playbook, delivering a more unified nation by using tariffs to ensure that everyone’s dinner pail is full.