Log-Rolling in Their Time

"Today, although protectionism lingers on the left, it is mostly a spent force. But in the decades following the Civil War, tariffs were considered pivotal to Americans’ well-being. Republicans championed tariffs to protect domestic industry. Democrats were anti-tariff, because farm states, especially the southern cotton and tobacco states, were exporters. But there was nothing like the modern notion of globalization, and congressmen were proud to assert their 'nationalism.' Yet even then, Smoot-Hawley was a solution in search of a problem. Trade walls were already high: in the late 1920s, only 3 percent of the manufactured goods consumed in America were imported. Plainly, industry did not need more protection."

In The New Republic, Roger Lowenstein reviews Douglas A. Irwin's Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression.