In the first half of the 19th century, tariff rates were seen as one of the biggest economic points of contention. More populist political leaders whose base consisted of farmers (Jefferson, Jackson, etc) would advocate for low tariff rates while more elistist/industrial leaders (Hamilton, Henry Clay, the Whig party generally) would advocate for a higher tariff rate. A particularly high tariff rate was what began the Nullification crisis, so clearly it was an issue that had a large affect on the population. My question is this: what effect on the citizenry/the ecnonomy on a macro scale did tariff rates have?
A similar binary exists with monetary policy. Populists like William J Bryan would advocate for a bimettalic currency, and big Buisness Republicans like McKinely would advocate for a strict Gold Standard. The gold standard was seen as directly contrary to the interests of the farmer class; why? What effect would bimettalism have on the ecnonomy?
The answer to both questions is pretty simple.
Tariffs helped manufacturers because tariffs make imports more expensive. That leaves consumers with little choice but to buy domestically-produced goods, which helps manufacturers, because they are effectively given a captive market. However, when one country puts tariffs in place other countries tend to slap tariffs on as well in retribution. This doesn't matter to manufacturers who don't export (because they still have a captive domestic consumer base), but it does hurt producers of primary, non-manufactured goods. Goods like cotton, which were the country's major cash crop right up until the civil war. Cotton was shipped out of the south to big Dickensian mills in England, and an English tariff on Southern cotton would be devastating to Southern manufacturers. In sum, tariffs helped manufacturers (the US North) and hurt cotton producers (the US South).
Bimetallism is really just a debate about the supply of money. This was a debate between East Coast financiers, bankers, and elites who benefited from high interest rates and a stable currency, and farmers who benefited from lower interest rates and inflation to erode their debts. Farming often involved taking out a loan at the start of the growing season to pay for labor and supplies, then repaying that loan after the harvest. A tight money supply meant that interest rates would be high, and that would make farming very difficult to be profitable. Many farmers often took out mortgages on their farms during lean years (or to buy it in the first place), so a tight money supply would hurt that part of the business too. The bimetallism debate was about expanding the money supply by allowing silver as legal tender, which would lower interest rates and stoke inflation, neither of was good for financiers. Bimetallism was a debate between creditors (banks) and debtors (farmers), Bryan earned his reputation as a great US populist because he took the side of the everyman farmer. Bimetallism was a debate between creditors and debtors.
As an aside, the concerns of the farmer coalition resulted in Bryan being consulted extensively during the negotiations which established the Federal Reserve. Farmers insisted on having twelve autonomous regional banks empowered to set credit rates as they saw fit based on regional characteristics; this was intended by farmers to ensure they could get credit and that East Coast bankers wouldn't have total control over lending. The farmer coalition is also why almost no banks were allowed to operate across state lines in the US until the rise of the ATM in the mid to late 1980s made those laws pointless. Forcing banks to operate only in one state effectively forced them to loan to farmers, which incidentally helped make the US banking system notoriously unstable.