What we can learn from a past tariff tiff
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
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
Got a question or comment for the hosts? Email makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | all right let's go hello hello everyone i'm kimberly adams welcome back to make me smart where none of us is |
| 0:14.1 | as smart as all of us i'm kyle rizdall tuesday 11th february today before we get into today's |
| 0:19.5 | topic we're going to take a little detour to the 1980s, |
| 0:22.4 | 1986, to be precise, because if you're a longtime listener of this podcast, I think I've |
| 0:28.6 | referenced this scene before, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. You know what I'm talking about, right? |
| 0:32.2 | Here you go. In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... |
| 0:40.3 | Anyone? Anyone? The Great Depression passed the... anyone? |
| 0:47.3 | Anyone? A tariff bill? The Hawley-Smout tariff act, which... |
| 0:53.3 | Anyone raised or lowered, raised tariffs in an effort to |
| 0:59.1 | collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? |
| 1:05.3 | So, more properly known in the modern nomenclature of Smoot-Hawley, I don't know how it got |
| 1:09.7 | turned around backwards to Holly-Smut. Anyway, tariffs, trade, Trump, and what is happening with American trade policy |
| 1:15.5 | today is what we're going to talk about. Right. And here to make us smart is Enou Monick. She's a fellow |
| 1:20.6 | for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Welcome to the show, Enu. Thanks so much for having me. So first, and hopefully not the same monotone as we just heard, can you break down the |
| 1:33.6 | Smoot-Hawley debacle referenced in that scene we just heard? |
| 1:37.7 | And maybe what it can teach us about where we are right now. |
| 1:41.0 | Sure. |
| 1:41.5 | Actually, Ferris Bueller is one of my favorite movies, and not just because |
| 1:45.3 | I'm a trade expert, and I love that clip. So thank you for playing it. Anytime. Smut-Hawley, |
| 1:51.1 | an important point of American history that I think is something that a lot of trade of experts |
| 1:55.8 | are kind of looking at today as that moment in time, which helps us kind of understand what we might be going through |
| 2:02.0 | in the coming months and years. You know, Smoot-Hawley is the closest historic example that we have |
... |
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