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Economists are warning Donald Trump about tariffs with a letter from the 1930s
One unintended consequence of Donald Trump’s protectionist impulses is that the dry details of trade policy history are now trendy. So much so that the once obscure Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 has suddenly become a headline-grabbing topic in publications ranging from NPR toBreitbart.
The bill—named after the two Republicans in Congress who pushed it—is an echo of the kind of politics-driven policies the current president is rolling out today. But perhaps its recent surge in popularity has less to do with the bill and more to do with where it led the US: into a trade war that ultimately worsened the Great Depression.
The impact of Smoot-Hawley is a cautionary tale that reinforces the message free-trade advocates are desperate to spread: that protectionism is bad for the economy. A group of economists, convened by the National Taxpayers Union, are taking the parallels between Smoot-Hawley and Trump’s tariffs even further. They are recycling a letter signed by 1,028 economists, sent to president Herbert Hoover in 1930 to protest the original bill, to warn the current White House occupant of the dangers of tariffs.
The new version of the letter, which is being circulated via a Google form, has already been signed by a few dozen prominent economists, including several Nobel laureates.
A lasting message
Barring a new introduction and a few edits, the current letter is identical to the original. Its main arguments are that tariffs on imports will increase consumer prices; that they will spur other countries to respond in kind, making American products more expensive abroad; and that they will create geopolitical tensions. “A tariff war does not furnish good soil for the growth of world peace,” it warns.
Bryan Riley, a Taxpayers Union trade expert who is behind the new letter, says he saw no need to rewrite the 1930 version because its ideas are timeless. “The very same things that economists were talking about in 1930 are all still relevant,” he notes.
Economists were as skeptical about the tariffs back then as they aretoday, because in both cases the reasons behind the taxes have more to do with politics than economics. The Smoot-Hawley bill’s stated goal was to bolster ailing American farmers, but it was useless in practice. Farmers at the time were suffering from depressed commodity prices worldwide, not cheap imports, according to Douglas Irwin, economics professor at Dartmouth College and author of Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy.
“It was purely politics,” Irwin said during a presentation of the book last year. “Even the farmers realized that they’re exporting a lot of their crops. They don’t really need this act.” On top of that, the initial agricultural tariffs sent other lawmakers on a mission to protect their own state industries—also for political purposes.
Economists today say Trump is similarly using tariffs on steel and aluminum to pander to the states that produce them. Like the Smoot-Hawley bill, they will do little to help the workers they are intended to protect; these days jobs are largely being lost to technology, rather than to cheap imports. Meanwhile, the resulting higher costs for the metals will hit the industries that use them, which employ many more workers.
A message to Americans
The original letter did not convince lawmakers to rethink their protectionist instincts. Some dismissed its authors as “college professors who never earned a dollar by the sweat of their brow by honest labor,” and “intellectual free traders, who seem to be more concerned with the prosperity of foreigners than they are with the well-being of our own American people.”
Given the support of the bill among his party, Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley bill despite the economists’ warnings.
In 1972, Paul H. Douglas, who was an economics professor at the University of Chicago when he signed the 1930 letter, wrote about what happened next: “All our predictions came true. The Depression deepened and the Western democracies fell apart.” Still, he added, the letter later helped justify the need for Congress to lift the tariffs.
Riley, from the Taxpayers Union, says the hope is that the latest letter will similarly make a case for free trade. “We really want to show that support for the benefits of trade is widespread and overwhelming,” he says.
Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signed the new letter because he believes the policies coming out of the White House “are bound to hurt most Americans.” But he’s predicting that its contents will again be ignored.
“There is very little chance that the current administration, which is not interested in furthering anybody’s welfare other than the president and his immediate family, would listen to it,” he says.
千名经济学家警告美国政府勿重蹈大萧条覆辙
信源：新华网｜编辑：2018-05-05
包括诺贝尔经济学奖得主、前美国总统经济顾问在内的１１００多位经济学家３日联名致信美国总统特朗普和美国国会，警告美国政府不要采取加征关税的保护主义政策，避免重蹈上世纪３０年代大萧条的覆辙。
这封由美国全国纳税人联合会公布的联名信说，１９３０年，１０２８位经济学家曾写信敦促美国国会拒绝保护主义的《斯穆特－霍利关税法》，但当时国会并未采纳经济学家建议，致使美国为此付出代价。如今，美国人又面临一系列新的保护主义举措，包括威胁退出贸易协定，错误呼吁通过新关税应对贸易不平衡，对洗衣机、太阳能组件和美国制造商使用的钢铝产品加征关税等。
联名信指出，虽然１９３０年以来发生了很大变化，比如贸易对美国经济明显更重要，但当时所解释的基本经济学原理并未改变。签署这封联名信的经济学家强烈敦促美国政府和国会不要重蹈覆辙。
联名信直接引用１９３０年经济学家给美国国会的谏言信说：“我们深信提高保护性关税是错误的。关税总体而言将增加国内消费者必须支付的价格。更高水平的保护将提高生活成本和伤害大多数美国公民。”
经济学家在信中警告，美国建筑、运输、公用事业、银行、酒店、报社、批发和零售贸易以及许多其他行业的雇员都将是关税保护措施的明显输家，因为他们并不生产任何被关税壁垒保护的产品。同时，美国多数农民也将受到双重伤害，一方面作为消费者必须支付更高的产品价格，另一方面作为生产者其农产品出口将受到限制。高关税政策不可避免还会对国际关系产生影响，关税战不利于促进世界和平。
１９３０年时任美国总统胡佛签署《斯穆特－霍利关税法》，对两万多种进口产品征收高额关税，引发主要贸易伙伴报复和掀起全球贸易战。经济学家普遍认为，这是加剧上世纪３０年代大萧条的重要原因。
华盛顿智库布鲁金斯学会近期发布的研究显示，如果全球爆发小型贸易战，即关税增加１０％，大多数经济体国内生产总值（ＧＤＰ）将减少１％至４．５％，其中美国ＧＤＰ将损失１．３％；如果全球爆发严重贸易战，即关税增加４０％，全球经济将重现上世纪３０年代的大萧条。
Our Mission
National Taxpayers Union (NTU) is the Voice of America's Taxpayers. NTU mobilizes elected officials and the general public on behalf of tax relief and reform, lower and less wasteful spending, individual liberty, and free enterprise. Founded in 1969, we work at all levels for the day when every taxpaying citizen's right to a limited government is among our nation's highest democratic principles.
NTU Tariffs Letter Signature Form
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Open letter to President Trump and Congress:
In 1930, 1,028 economists urged Congress to reject the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Today, Americans face a host of new protectionist activity, including threats to withdraw from trade agreements, misguided calls for new tariffs in response to trade imbalances, and the imposition of tariffs on washing machines, solar components, and even steel and aluminum used by U.S. manufacturers.
Congress did not take economists’ advice in 1930, and Americans across the country paid the price. The undersigned economists and teachers of economics strongly urge you not to repeat that mistake. Much has changed since 1930 -- for example, trade is now significantly more important to our economy -- but the fundamental economic principles as explained at the time have not:[1] [note -- the following text is taken from the 1930 letter]
We are convinced that increased protective duties would be a mistake. They would operate, in general, to increase the prices which domestic consumers would have to pay. A higher level of protection would raise the cost of living and injure the great majority of our citizens.
Few people could hope to gain from such a change. Construction, transportation and public utility workers, professional people and those employed in banks, hotels, newspaper offices, in the wholesale and retail trades, and scores of other occupations would clearly lose, since they produce no products which could be protected by tariff barriers.
The vast majority of farmers, also, would lose through increased duties, and in a double fashion. First, as consumers they would have to pay still higher prices for the products, made of textiles, chemicals, iron, and steel, which they buy. Second, as producers, their ability to sell their products would be further restricted by barriers placed in the way of foreigners who wished to sell goods to us.
Our export trade, in general, would suffer. Countries cannot permanently buy from us unless they are permitted to sell to us, and the more we restrict the importation of goods from them by means of ever higher tariffs the more we reduce the possibility of our exporting to them. Such action would inevitably provoke other countries to pay us back in kind by levying retaliatory duties against our goods.
Finally, we would urge our Government to consider the bitterness which a policy of higher tariffs would inevitably inject into our international relations. A tariff war does not furnish good soil for the growth of world peace.
FIRST SIGNERS[2]
Alvin Roth, Stanford University
Richard H. Thaler, University of Chicago
Oliver D. Hart, Harvard University
Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Roger Myerson, University of Chicago
N. Gregory Mankiw, Harvard University
Avinash K. Dixit, Princeton University
James Heckman, University of Chicago
Gene Grossman, Princeton University
Robert C. Merton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Raymond Riezman, University of Iowa
James E. Anderson, Boston College
Donald J. Boudreaux, George Mason University
Robert Shiller, Yale University
Vernon Smith, Chapman University
J. Bradford Jensen, Georgetown University
Gary Hufbauer, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Robert E. Lucas, Jr., University of Chicago
Robert Engle, New York University
Eric Maskin, Harvard University
Gordon Hanson, UC San Diego
Eugene F. Fama, University of Chicago
