Letters to the Editor: What history can teach us about President Trump’s tariffs

To the editor: Contributor Veronique de Rugy’s essay on the parallels between President Trump’s tariff idiocy and the economic calamity that followed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was brilliant and apposite (“Economic nostalgia woos voters, but it leads to terrible policies,” April 24). As ever, we learn nothing from history. Imposing tariffs is a game two can — and will — play.

She could have added that more than 1,000 economists signed a petition warning President Hoover of the dangers of the act, imploring him to veto it. Henry Ford made a personal visit to the White House, calling the bill “economic stupidity.” J.P. Morgan’s chief executive, Thomas Lamont, wrote that he “almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot Tariff.”

While Hoover himself called the bill “vicious, extortionate and obnoxious,” he signed it anyway, saying it was his duty to the Republican Party. It didn’t take long for other countries to retaliate with their own tariffs, turning a recession into the Great Depression and victimizing the very people it was supposed to protect. Sound familiar?

Spencer Grant, Laguna Niguel