Smoot-Hawley Tariff 1930
Topic: The Making of a Global World · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was a US law of June 1930. It raised import duties (taxes on foreign goods) on thousands of items to protect American farmers and factories during the Great Depression. Other countries hit back with their own duties. World trade then shrank even further. It is a standard example of how protection by one country can deepen a global slump.
Example
NCERT lists the US doubling of import duties as one cause of the Great Depression. It counts this as "another blow to world trade", alongside farm overproduction and the withdrawal of US loans. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 is the law usually linked to this rise. India felt the effects too: between 1928 and 1934 its exports and imports nearly halved.
Don't confuse with
- Corn Laws: These were British laws that restricted corn imports to protect landed groups. Industrialists and urban dwellers later forced their abolition. They belong to 19th-century Britain, not the 1930s USA.