Articles Of Confederation Flaws

The Articles of Confederation marked the death of the 13 Colonies and the birth of the United States of America, a country of it’s own after fighting with a superpower for so long. After being controlled and constrained by Britain for centuries, the now-Americans were afraid of the government becoming a second Britain. The new American government drafted the Articles of Confederation in 1777, the first law of their new country, and to avoid creating another restrictive government, the Articles were extremely limited federally and failed to provide a strong government in terms of economics, law enforcement, and government. These issues can be shown by just a few of the restraints on the federal government: the inability to print national currency, …show more content…
Since tariffs couldn’t be placed on foreign goods, local American businesses were unable to compete with foreign imports. Along with this, although the federal government could print its own currency for the country, the states had the right to too. This meant that each state was allowed to create its own form of money, making interstate trade more difficult as there was no uniform currency. Another example of an economic issue with the Articles is that Congress was not allowed to regulate trade for the most part. The only time they were allowed to deal with trade regulation was when it was with Native Americans but even then that was only if interfer with a state’s own trade. This left Congress unable to create any trade agreements or policies with foreign power, limiting what they could include in treaties. These examples of economic limitations and disorganization under the Articles of Confederation help demonstrate that the U.S. was not united during this time and states acted independently from the federal government and each