To the editor: Contributor Veronique de Rugy’s essay on the parallels between President Trump’s tariff idiocy and the financial calamity that adopted the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was good and apposite (“Economic nostalgia woos voters, but it leads to terrible policies,” April 24). As ever, we be taught nothing from historical past. Imposing tariffs is a recreation two can — and can — play.
She might have added that greater than 1,000 economists signed a petition warning President Hoover of the hazards of the act, imploring him to veto it. Henry Ford made a private go to to the White Home, calling the bill “economic stupidity.” J.P. Morgan’s chief government, Thomas Lamont, wrote that he “virtually went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot Tariff.”
Whereas Hoover himself referred to as the invoice “vicious, extortionate and obnoxious,” he signed it anyway, saying it was his responsibility to the Republican Get together. It didn’t take lengthy for different nations to retaliate with their very own tariffs, turning a recession into the Nice Despair and victimizing the very folks it was supposed to guard. Sound acquainted?
Spencer Grant, Laguna Niguel
