1,028 Economists Asked Hoover to Veto Smoot-Hawley — He Signed It Anyway

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 raised U.S. tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods at a moment when the U.S. economy was already a year into the Great Depression. Senator Reed Smoot, a Republican from Utah, and Representative Willis Hawley, a Republican from Oregon, drafted the legislation primarily to protect American agriculture and certain industrial sectors from foreign competition. By the time it cleared both chambers, more than a thousand economists had signed a public petition asking President Herbert Hoover to veto it. Henry Ford visited the White House and called it "an economic stupidity." Hoover privately described the bill as "vicious, extortionate, and obnoxious." He signed it anyway on June 17, 1930, citing party unity and pressure from Republican senators on whose support he relied for other priorities.

The direct effects on tariff rates were sharp. Average duties on dutiable imports went from 40.1 percent in 1929 to 59.1 percent in 1932 — about 19 percentage points. The retaliation effects were sharper. Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy raised their own tariffs on American goods within months. Total U.S. exports fell from $5.4 billion in 1929 to $2.1 billion in 1933 — a 61 percent decline. World trade as a whole contracted by roughly two-thirds between 1929 and 1934. Most modern economic historians treat Smoot-Hawley as an aggravating factor rather than a primary cause of the Depression, but the consensus is that it made a bad situation considerably worse and locked in a global retaliation cycle that took the GATT and Bretton Woods to undo.

Both sponsors paid a political price. The 1932 elections were a Democratic landslide, and Smoot was one of twelve Republican senators defeated. Hawley lost his House primary the same year. Hoover lost the presidency by 472 electoral votes to 59.