Dan Perry

About 95 years ago, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act aimed to protect American industries by imposing record tariffs on imported goods. …US exports plummeted, global trade shrank and the Great Depression deepened, worsening global economic instability, contributing to turmoil that would later fuel World War II. It was a disaster. …The whole episode serves as a textbook example of how trade wars backfire, choking commerce and harming economies rather than helping them. But President Trump doesn’t seem to know this, and so he’s threatening a brutal tariff war with America’s democratic neighbors. …For context, in Trump’s first term he placed tariffs on Canadian lumber. This, together with tariffs on aluminum and steel, was estimated to cost the average U.S. family at least $300 per year. The current threatened tariffs could cost 10 times that much. …It is stunningly reckless for the Trump administration to kneecap America’s economy and eviscerate soft power built over decades.