Donald Trump strode into the Rose Garden Wednesday with the elegance and subtlety of a sledgehammer. He was there to enact a variety of “reciprocal tariffs” on a host of nations, friends and foes, on what he called “Liberation Day.” Within a minute of smiling and walking to the podium, he talked about “punishing” our allies and told us “in many cases the friend is worse than the foe” in trade. He pointed at the Oval Office about 60 feet away from where he stood, and as the brisk April breeze danced through his thinning hair, he said he blamed former presidents and past leaders for destroying the manufacturing base of the U.S. “To an extent no one can even believe.”
Then he tried to gild the lily by saying the Great Depression would have never happened if there had been tariffs at the time. The problem is, there were. And, worse, President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law in 1930. The law exacerbated economic strife in America, which led to less international trade, cooperation and trust among nations. The economy, as we all should know, if we took any American history in 12 years of mandatory education, did not improve because of the tariffs.
