Report on Manufactures

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In United States history, the Report on the Subject of Manufactures, generally referred to by its shortened title Report on Manufactures, is the third of four major reports, and magnum opus, of American Founding Father and first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. It was presented to the Congress on December 5, 1791. In the report, Hamilton argued for industrial policy to support modern manufacturing technologies in the United States.^[1]

It laid forth economic principles rooted in both the mercantilist system of Elizabeth I's England and the practices of Jean-Baptiste Colbert of France. The main ideas of the Report would later be incorporated into the "American System" program by US Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and his Whig Party. Abraham Lincoln, who called himself a "Henry Clay tariff Whig" during his early years, would later make the principles cornerstones, together with his opposition to the institution and the expansion of slavery, of the fledgling Republican Party.

Hamilton's ideas would form the basis for the American School of economics.