What we can learn from a past tariff tiff (rerun)

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hey Smarties! Today we’re revisiting an episode from earlier this year that might help you make sense of all the tit for tat tariff fight from the past few weeks. It unpacks some tariff history and the potential economic consequences of President Trump’s ongoing trade war.

If President Donald Trump goes through with his plan to levy sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. has done such a thing. Ever heard of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930? Anyone? Those tariffs are widely credited with sinking the United States deeper into the Great Depression. And although global trade looks different nowadays, they can teach us a lot about how Trump’s protectionist approach to global trade could play out. On the show today, Inu Manak, a fellow for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, explains how the Smoot-Hawley tariff debacle can shed light on the current moment, why the president has the power to wield tariffs in the first place, and how punishing trading partners could leave the U.S. economy at a disadvantage. Plus, what this fight has to do with the 1980s film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and Roomba vacuum cleaners!

Later, one listener’s call to visit your local butcher. And, dating coach Damona Hoffman, host of the “Dates and Mates” podcast, answers the “Make Me Smart” question just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

“Tariffs on Trading Partners: Can the President Actually Do That?” from Council on Foreign Relations
“One Response to Trump’s Tariffs: Trade That Excludes the U.S.” from The New York Times
“The United States has been disengaging from the global economy” from the Peterson Institute for International Economics
“Protectionism 100 years ago helped ignite a world war. Could it happen again?” from The Washington Post
“The US is one of the least trade-oriented countries in the world – despite laying the groundwork for today’s globalized system” from The Conversation

Double your impact when you donate to Marketplace today, thanks to a $30,000 match from the Investors Challenge Fund: https://support.marketplace.org/smart-sn

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, listeners. Our goal at Marketplace is to raise the economic intelligence of the country,
0:06.5	and that goes for teens and young adults, too. The newest season of Financially Inclined, hosted by
0:12.2	Janelli Espinall, tackles topics like how to align your values with your money decisions,
0:18.5	the skill of negotiating, and what you can get out of internships.
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0:34.8	Tune in to financially inclined wherever you find your podcasts.
0:40.4	Hey, everybody, it's Kai. Today we're bringing you an episode from earlier this year that might
0:45.1	help you make sense of all the tariff news from the past couple of weeks. It gets into some
0:49.6	tariff history and the economic consequences of trade wars, but let me say, before we get into it,
0:55.0	today we are kicking off Marketplace's March fundraiser, and here is the deal. The first $30,000
1:00.4	in donations is going to be matched by the Investors Challenge Fund. We need your help to put all of these
1:06.7	matching funds to work informing millions of people about this economy. So please give the amount
1:11.4	that works for you and it will be doubled. You can do that by going to marketplace.org
1:15.3	slash give smart or follow the link in our show notes. Here's the show.
1:22.5	All right. Let's go.
1:30.9	Hello, everyone.
1:31.8	I'm Kimberly Adams.
1:32.8	Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.
1:36.5	I'm Kyle Risdahl, Tuesday, 11 February today.
1:39.4	Before we get into today's topic, we're going to take a little detour to the 1980s, 1980s,
1:43.3	to be precise,
	...

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