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Article: Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
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SMOOT-HAWLEY TARIFF ACT
Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley were members of the U.S. Congress, who introduced a bill known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. This tariff (a tax on foreign imports) came to be synonymous with a major public policy blunder and failure. Smoot-Hawley was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover (1929
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1933) after the stock market crash of 1929. Some historians argue that the tariff was so high that it created unprecedented foreign retaliation against the United States. According to this view, Smoot-Hawley helped convert what would have been a normal economic downturn in the U.S. economy into a major worldwide depression, the Great Depression (1929
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