Sigh: We Did Tariffs and Deportations Before in America. It Didn't Go Well

Smart guys were saying don’t do it. But the President – a pretty smart guy himself; a business guy – ignored them. He signed the tariff legislation anyway, imposing hefty duties on just about everything America imported from just about everywhere.

Our trading partners saw this as a great, big red-white-and-blue middle finger aimed straight at them. They returned the gesture. Some historians think the ensuing trade war triggered the Great Depression. Others think that it at least made the Depression a good deal worse. (Some neoconservatives — remember them? — have argued that what really caused the Depression was fear that the tariff wouldn’t pass.)

That President was Herbert Hoover. He was wealthy, a genuinely self-made man. He had no family real estate fortune behind him; no reality TV makeover to brand him as something he was not. Hoover had been Secretary of Commerce during the Roaring ’20s.

What did he do about the Depression? Not enough, thought the millions of Americans who voted him out in a landslide first chance they got. But he did do something about immigration, for Hoover’s administration deported nearly 2 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. The slogan was: “American jobs for Americans.”

https://www.postalley.org/2024/10/26/sigh-we-did-tariffs-and-deportations-before-in-america-it-didnt-go-well/