During his “Liberation Day” event on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said that the Great Depression would not have happened if tariffs had continued.
Trump made his argument while announcing wide spread tariffs on foreign imports to the U.S., saying that if income tax was never established in 1913, then the country wouldn’t have been thrown into the depression in the 1930s.
Before income tax, Trump said the country leaned into tariffs, collecting money from other countries, before the country ended them, despite a tariff act from President Herbert Hoover at the time.
“In 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy, would have been a much different story,” Trump said.
“They tried to bring back tariffs to save our country, but it was gone, it was gone, it was too late. Nothing could have been done, took years and years to get out of that depression,” he added.
The Tariff Act of 1930 raised tariffs on tens of thousands of goods in the U.S. and was known as a protectionist policy as federal officials looked to end the economic crisis at the time.
However, the Office of the Historian within the State Department shares that the act, also known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, actually “provoked a wave of foreign retaliation that plunged the world deeper into the Great Depression.”
The department notes that after Hoover’s law, imports from Europe plummeted, falling from $1.3 billion to just $390 million by 1932. Exports to Europe also fell from $2.3 billion to $784 million, the office shared.
The remarks from Trump came after he announced a 10% tariff on all countries, set to go into effect on Friday. He also shared that around 60 countries will face higher reciprocal tariffs, set to go into effect on April 9 at 12:01 a.m., and a 25% tariff on all foreign-made automobiles.