Plain History: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Great Depression

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Apr 11, 2025

Douglas Irwin, an esteemed economist and historian from Dartmouth, delves into the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff and its catastrophic role in deepening the Great Depression. He discusses how this 1930 legislation, intended to protect American farmers, backfired spectacularly, illustrating the pitfalls of misguided protectionism. Irwin reflects on Herbert Hoover’s struggle between party loyalty and economic reality, the tariff's international repercussions, and the complex legacy it left that still resonates in today's economic debates.

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INSIGHT

1920s Economy

The 1920s witnessed growth and anxiety, with agriculture declining.
This decline set the stage for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

ANECDOTE

Hoover's Farm Relief

Herbert Hoover, known for competence, oversaw food distribution in WWI.
He campaigned on farm relief, promising tariffs to aid struggling farmers.

INSIGHT

Farming Costs

Tariffs on manufactured goods helped industry but raised farming costs.
This tariff, along with European market shifts, squeezed farmers' profits.

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The 1920s and the 2020s share a special kinship. One hundred years ago, the U.S. was grappling with a mix of growth, technological splendor, and generational anxiety—a familiar cocktail (albeit, from an era where cocktails were illegal). The era’s young people felt uniquely besieged by global forces. “My whole generation is restless," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in This Side of Paradise. “A new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."

America was changing. And change always implies a kind of loss. We were moving toward cars and cities and manufacturing. And that meant we were moving away from horses and farmland and agriculture. And so, in 1930, just months into the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover signed a new piece of legislation to restore farmers to their previous glory. It was a great big tariff—the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Rather than save the economy, it deepened the depression.

Today, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff is one of the most infamous failures in the history of American politics. To suggest that it holds lessons for this moment in history is to state the obvious. Our guest is Douglas Irwin, an economist and historian at Dartmouth University and an expert on the economic debates of the Great Depression. We talk about the economic motivations of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, the congressional debates that shaped it, the president who signed it, and the legacy it left. We talk about the economic instinct to preserve the past—an instinct that has never gone away in American history—and the profound irony, that some efforts to return America to its former glory can have the unintended effect of robbing America of a richer future.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Douglas Irwin

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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