Smoot-Hawley Tariff signed

On June 17, 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Tariff Act of 1930 in Washington after Congress approved the measure sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley. The law raised tariff rates on more than 20,000 imported goods, including many farm and manufactured products, in an effort to shield American producers during the worsening depression. Hoover signed the bill despite a petition from more than one thousand economists who warned that higher duties would damage international trade.

The tariff intensified the central economic dispute over whether protectionism could rescue American agriculture and industry after the stock-market collapse of 1929. Smoot, Hawley, and many Republican protectionists argued that the United States needed a higher tariff wall against foreign competition, but critics such as economist Irving Fisher and Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson feared retaliation from trading partners. Canada, Europe, and other markets soon answered with higher barriers of their own, deepening the contraction in global commerce that already plagued the Hoover economy.

The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 followed directly from the failure of Smoot-Hawley and gave Secretary of State Cordell Hull authority to negotiate tariff reductions with foreign nations. That reversal made the 1930 tariff an important turning point in the shift from Republican protectionism toward the trade-liberalizing policies that shaped later Democratic administrations.