Tariffs were very strong American worker wage protection, HENCE corporations hate tariffs.

[pampango]

4. No. Getting rid of high tariffs was a big progressive win in the early 20th century.

FDR got rid of them a second time in the 1930's after republicans raised tariffs again in the 1920's. And corporations loved high tariffs (which is why republicans raised them.) It protected them from competition and preserved domestic monopolies.

"The Hidden Progressive History of Income Tax Replacing High Tariffs"

Tariffs and excise taxes meant that almost the entirety of federal tax revenue came from the poor while the rich paid virtually nothing. This spawned enormous outrage.

Everyday Americans hated the tax system of the Gilded Age. The federal government gathered taxes in two ways. First, it placed high tariff rates on imports. These import taxes protected American industries from competition. This allowed companies to charge high prices on products that the working class needed to survive while also protecting the monopolies that controlled their everyday lives. Second, the government had high excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol, two products used heavily by the American working class.

Today, we are supposed to hate paying taxes. They are our “tax burden.” We vote for politicians who will reduce our taxes, even if that means destroying the welfare state. Conservatives’ century-long war against taxes has paid off by convincing everyday Americans to think taxes are a horrible thing that pays for government waste.

Our ancestors knew this was not true. The income tax was the most popular economic justice movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. This truly grassroots movement forced politicians to act in order to stay in office, leading to the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913. That’s right, the income tax was so popular that the nation passed a constitutional amendment so that the right-wing Supreme Court couldn’t overturn it.

Corporations immediately organized against this. In a strategy we can recognize today, the Chamber of Commerce distorted the bill’s purpose, telling the public that the income tax would drive them into poverty, even though the bill did not affect working-class people. Yet the Chamber made little headway in the face of this overwhelmingly popular movement.

http://mobile.alternet.org/alternet/#!/entry/the-hidden-progressive-history-of-income-tax,51754f28da27f5d9d0a7ea44/1

FDR campaigned against high tariffs, lowered them during his presidency and set up the low-tariff trade system of the post-WWII world.