The Passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act: Why Did the President Sign the Bill?

This article examines the reasons for the passage of the “Smoot-Hawley” Tariff Act in 1930 by focusing on President Herbert Hoover’s support for the bill. It is well known for imposing high tariff rates on many items in the midst of the Great Depression. The 1930 act represented, as most scholars conclude, the peak of protectionism in U.S. trade history. By causing other nations to enact retaliatory tariffs, it furthered the division of the world into economic blocks. ¹ Even today, the act is referred to as a notorious measure that should not be repeated again. ² Several studies of the passage of the act have shed light on the legislative process. Moreover, previous studies have centered on analyzing the impact of either interest groups or party politics. Those studies, however, neglect the role of the executive branch, even though President Hoover had to sign the law in order for it to take effect. He supported the bill because it finally included a provision called Flexible Tariff Provision (FTP), which he had strongly advocated.

The FTP, which the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922 first introduced, enabled the president and the Tariff Commission, an agency independent from Congress, to change tariff rates without congressional debate and approval. Through the FTP, the federal government could change tariff rates for single items at any time, in addition to the congressional general tariff revisions that occurred about every six years. The U.S. Constitution prescribes that only Congress should have power to set tariff rates. In this sense, the legalization of the FTP represented a revolutionary change in the history of American foreign trade. However, during the congressional debate of the 1930 act, a good deal of opposition arose to granting the president authority to change tariff rates. Analyzing the creation of the FTP can provide a different image of Hoover from the general impression that he was a staunch protectionist and that he played only a minor part in the passage of the act.

This study is not the first to note Hoover’s important role. Alfred Ecke’s 1995 overview of American trade policy briefly mentions Hoover’s interest in the FTP. ³ Among the few studies of the FTP, Richard Snyder (1973) argued that Hoover fought hard with the Senate to gain control of the FTP. Snyder, though, views Hoover as an adamant protectionist. ⁴ This article, while also emphasizing the president’s leadership, will demonstrate that through the FTP he wanted to create an objective and businesslike process for determining tariffs that would lead to moderate rates under presidential discretionary power.

Previous Studies

Early studies of the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act have examined influences on Congress. Although not all of these deal thoroughly with the act, they do offer controversial explanations for its passage. Franklin Taussig (1931) argued that the passage and the form of high tariffs imposed on many items of the act resulted from traditional logrolling in both the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance. ⁵ E. E. Schattschneider (1935), who studied the act thoroughly and carefully, contends that the actions of lobbyists and special interests that requested tariff protection were responsible for major provisions of the law. He argued that domestic producers who requested to raise tariffs controlled the passage of the act. ⁶ Joan Wilson (1971), influenced by Schattschneider’s model, points out that big business, exporters and importers had complaints about the government’s traditional high tariff policy, but their influence on Congress was comparatively small. ⁷ Robert Pastor (1980) insists that the 1930 Act was simply a consequence of party politics, because the Republican Party, which then dominated Congress, had long advocated a high-tariff policy, while the Democrats favored a low-tariff policy. ⁸

Since then, a controversial debate emphasizing either interest groups or party politics has continued. Barry Eichengreen (1989) concludes that an economic coalition of industrial and agricultural protectionists determined the passage of the 1930 Act. ⁹ To the contrary, Colleen Callahan, Judith McDonald...