William Howard Taft was an American jurist and statesman who served as both the 27th President of the United States and later the 10th Chief Justice of the United States.
Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, 1909, passed by the U.S. Congress. It was the first change in tariff laws since the Dingley Act of 1897; the issue had been ignored by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Republican platform of 1908 pledged revision of the tariff downward, and to this end President Taft called Congress into special session. The House promptly passed a tariff bill, sponsored by Sereno E. Payne, which called for some reduced rates. The Senate substituted a bill, fathered by Nelson W. Aldrich, which made fewer downward revisions and increased numerous rates. After a sustained attack on the Aldrich Bill by a group of insurgent Republicans in the Senate, a compromise bill was adopted, which somewhat moderated the high rates of the Aldrich bill; the measure was immediately signed by Taft. It lowered 650 tariff schedules, raised 220, and left 1,150 unchanged. Although the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act was less aggressively protectionist than the McKinley Tariff Act and the later Dingley Act, it was, nevertheless, protectionist.
Ballinger was an appointee of President William Taft, the man who had succeeded the committed conservationist President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had developed most of his environmentally friendly policies with the assistance of his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. By 1909, Roosevelt, Pinchot, and other conservationists feared that Taft, though a fellow Republican, and Ballinger were systematically undermining the accomplishments of the previous administration by reopening to exploitation public lands that had been closed.
Dollar diplomacy of the United States particularly during President William Howard Taft's term was a form of American foreign policy to further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries.