With fatal consequences: The US has already relied on tariffs once before

WAZ With fatal consequences: The US has already relied on tariffs once before Holger Schmale • 2 hours • 3 minutes reading time The tariffs imposed by Donald Trump are causing chaos on the stock markets One of Trump's predecessors, Herbert Hoover, also relied on protectionism The consequences were fatal back then US President Donald Trump likes to draw large historical connections. The Tuesday on which he announced his new tariff policy will go down as one of the most important days in US history, he said in the White House Rose Garden. However, he doesn't seem to have looked it up in the history books (or even on Google) beforehand. There, under the term "tariff policy," he would have come across his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, and his "Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act," which the president enacted on June 17, 1930 – with catastrophic consequences for the US economy. Congress had previously passed corresponding resolutions with a Republican majority. With this law, the United States increased import tariffs on over 20,000 products to a record level. The goal was to better protect the American economy from foreign competition, just as Trump now justifies his actions. The law was also intended to counteract the global economic crisis that began after the great stock market crash of October 1929. But the exact opposite happened; American tariff policy acted like an accelerant. World trade declined by about 60 percent by 1933. US imports alone fell by 66 percent between 1929 and 1933, and exports by as much as 70 percent. The US's protectionist approach was imitated around the world, and numerous other countries followed suit. Increasingly, only bilateral trade agreements were concluded, and multilateral rules such as the most-favored-nation clause (which grants trade advantages to all contracting parties) were rarely applied. Even at the time, Hoover's trade policy met with fierce criticism from business circles and academics. Among the fiercest opponents was Henry Ford, who had significantly advanced the development of US industry with his assembly-line automobile production and whose company was one of the largest exporters. Tariff policy had dramatic consequences for the American population. The consequences of the global economic downturn hit the US population hard. In 1932, unemployment rose to 25 percent, average wages fell by 60 percent, and agricultural incomes by 50 percent. Contributing to this were devastating droughts and dust storms in the vast plains of the US and Canada, caused by climate change and the destruction of large areas of prairie grassland by agriculture. All of this led to widespread impoverishment and despair among the socially disadvantaged sections of the US. For many Americans, the "Great Depression" of those years is considered the worst period in recent US history. President Hoover was accused not only of sharing responsibility for this situation through his economic policies, but also of a ruthless approach to the plight of large segments of the population. Against this backdrop, Hoover's initially high popularity declined dramatically the longer the Depression lasted. Hopes increasingly turned to the Democratic presidential candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pointed the way out of the crisis with his "New Deal." He won the 1932 election by a landslide against Hoover, who left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history.