Tariff Dbq

688 Words3 Pages
Following the World War I, the US manifested isolationism and protectionism by means of encouraging domestic consumptions, expanding economic opportunities, imposing high tariffs, and limiting immigrations to minimize negative impacts on America from foreign countries (especially the European influences). In addition, the US were fully aware of their significant loss of money (war debts) and soldiers, therefore US took a number of drastic measures in order to isolate them from the rest of the world. Amidst these isolationism measures, the most observable one was the US tariff increase. • Setting High Tariffs After World War I, the Republicans presided over the Congress. In the interim, Warren Harding in his presidency, overruled the preceding…show more content…
However this act caused an unintentional upshot where it made the European nations even more difficult to service their war debts. 2. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, 1930 During the 1928 election campaign, Republican presidential candidate Herbert Hoover pledged to help the farmer by raising tariff levels on agricultural products. Nevertheless, the calls for increased protection flooded in from all sectors of the economy. This accelerated US Congress to produce a piece of legislation, the Tariff Act of 1930 (the Smoot-Hawley tariff) that entrenched the protectionism of the Fordney-McCumber tariff. Most scholars agreed Smoot-Hawley did nothing to foster cooperation among nations and devastated international relations in a new era after the war. It also contributed to a drastic contraction of international trade. For example, U.S. imports from Europe declined from a 1929 high of $1,334 million to just $390 million in 1932, while U.S. exports to Europe fell from $2,341 million in 1929 to $784 million in 1932. Overall, world trade declined by some 66% between 1929 and…show more content…
Thereafter, beginning with the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, the United States generally sought trade liberalization through bilateral or multilateral tariff reductions. • Inspiring domestic consumption and expending economic scale The majority of Republicans firmly believed that a government should refrain from the economics in order to prevent interception, therefore adopted “laissez-faire”. The actual purpose for “laissez-faire” is to foster free market policy, and the first three president to implement “laissez-faire” on American were Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. By fostering the free market policy, the US government devised additional job vacancies, as higher employment rate also induces more consumptions, and governmental investments in diverse industries. • Limiting Immigrations The American government began to issue a series of laws in order to restrict the quota of immigrations, for instance, the “Quota Act of 1921”, the act entitled a mere 3% of a country's total population for immigrating to America, and a yearly limit of 350,000 immigrants with a base year of 1910. In 1929, another immigration-limiting law was issued, the “National Origins Act”. This act’s base year was shifted to 1920, and altered the yearly immigrants limit from 350,000 to
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