This moot-holly tariff act was an error

This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 17th, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

This moot-holly tariff act was an error of gigantic proportions

as the US slid into its greatest ever economic collapse.

Protectionism was precisely the wrong prescription.

So argues Douglas Erwin in his new book, Peddling Protectionism. We spoke following a forum for new book, Pedaling Protectionism.

We spoke following a forum for his book held last month.

Help us understand the environment that led up

to the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Terrif Act.

Well, you might recall the 1920s was called the Roaring 20s, because it was actually a boom

period for the United States economy.

Industry was growing very well, unemployment remained low,

but the farm sector was very weak. And so the smooth holy tariff actually has its origins

not so much in industries pushing the government for higher tariffs to block imports

because industry is doing very well during this period.

It had to do with agrarian discontent and the Republican leadership decided

well we're going to throw a bone to the farmers, so to speak,

help them out by imposing a tariff on imports.

That sort of got started and the problem was

is that most farmers were export-oriented.

They sold their crops overseas rather than faced a lot of

...