Featured Image Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty
Topics: Donald Trump, Money, Politics, History, US News, Republicans
Ella Scott
Topics: Donald Trump, Money, Politics, History, US News, Republicans
The Trump Administration’s latest round of tariffs has social media users up in arms, with some claiming history is somewhat repeating itself.
US President Donald Trump, 78, has announced a round of sweeping tariffs on basically all goods coming into the country.
The businessman, who unveiled the duties on what he called ‘Liberation Day’, has revealed that 60 countries including Lesotho, Laos and Vietnam will be hit with tariffs of up to 50 percent. These are due to come into effect on April 9.
Meanwhile, it’s been announced a 10 percent ‘baseline’ levy will affect all UK imports into the US from 5 April.
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Countries in the European Union are also facing a 20 percent tariff, according to the BBC.
"For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike," Trump said during the reveal.
Amid the announcement, a viral social media post is serving as a reminder that this isn’t the first time mass tariffs have been imposed in US history.
The user remarked that 1828 and 1930 also saw similar duties being passed, writing: “All spaced about 100 years apart because everyone who remembers the last one needs to be dead for the next one to happen.”
The user, who falsely claims the impositions actually caused Depressions, added: “I hope this one makes us rich tho.”
The Tariff Act of 1789 was the first time a levy had been imposed on the US. But The Tariff of 1816, also known as the Dallas Tariff, was the first time Congress said yes to protecting U.S. manufactured items from overseas competition.
Another significant moment is the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, implemented to protect northern and western agricultural products from competition with foreign imports, writes the US House of Representatives.
Although its passing did not directly cause a depression like the social media user said, the high protective tariff did trigger significant political and economic unrest.
This unease was especially prevalent in the South where the cost of living was significantly raised.
Eventually, the 1828 Tariff, approved during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, caused a Nullification Crisis in the US.
Tensions remained throughout the US despite a compromised tariff being introduced in the winter of 1833.
Meanwhile, historians and economists agree that another tariff - namely the one introduced in 1930 - significantly worsened the effects of the 1929 Great Depression, causing global trade to collapse and many businesses to fail.
This excise, known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was, signed into law by former US President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930, following the stock market crash on ‘Black Thursday’.
It raised import duties to protect American businesses and farmers but ultimately caused global trade to plummet as a result.
Doug Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and past president of the Economic History Association, wrote in 2020 that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was ‘one of the most controversial tariff acts ever enacted by Congress’.
Meanwhile, Kris James Mitchener, an economics professor at Santa Clara University who studies economic history and political economy, told CNBC that it sparked the ‘mother of all trade wars’.
Now that President Trump has proposed his new ‘baseline’ tariffs, social media users have been having their say on the ‘horrifying’ duties.
“There's just no reason to add all these taxes on American small businesses and consumers,” said one Redditor. “Just raise the income tax if you want to raise taxes this much.”
A second said: “Do Americans not like write things down and learn from what happened before?”
A third responded that, while they are not a ‘fan’ of tariffs, they will continue to keep ‘buying good cheap businesses and leave the guess work to smarter people'.
“There will some pain for sure. But the $38tril debt is the difference this time. Major correction has to happen. This one is at least managed,” replied someone else.
Another said: “Hope in one hand. S**t in the other. See which one fills up first.”