Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act is a 1930 United States federal law, sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis Hawley, that raised import duties on more than twenty thousand categories of foreign goods to some of the highest levels in American history. It was intended to protect American farmers and manufacturers as the Great Depression deepened, but more than a thousand economists petitioned President Herbert Hoover to veto the bill, warning it would provoke retaliation; Hoover signed it into law in June 1930 regardless. Numerous trading partners responded with retaliatory tariffs of their own, and international trade contracted sharply in the years that followed. Many economists and historians regard the act as having worsened and prolonged the Great Depression, and it stands as a cautionary example frequently invoked in later debates over trade protectionism.