By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

The current administration has raised eyebrows by claiming that the Great Depression was caused by tariffs being “too low” and that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which jacked up taxes on trade, came too late.

Critics point out that the Smoot-Hawley bill, introduced and passed by the House of Representatives in 1929, triggered a trade war that started even before the Senate and President signed it into law, as everyone in the world expected the Republicans in charge would. Others claim that even if it didn’t cause the Great Depression, those tariffs made it worse.

Who is right? To test this, I look at data on recessions from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), looking at their frequency, length, and periods of growth. I look at the 78 years between 1946 (the first full year start of postwar trade openness) and 2024. I compare them to the 78 years between 1854 (the first year of NBER data) and 1932, the last full year of the Hoover Administration.

Here’s what I learned. First of all, in those 78 years of tariffs (1854-1932) there were 20 recessions, almost one every four years. From 1946-2024, reducing tariffs produced far fewer recessions, or 12 in the same time frame.

NBER measures recession length from “peak to trough.” The average recession length from the high tariff era (1854-1932) was 21.4 months. For recessions from the low tariff era (1946-2024), it was 10.3 months, less than half as long.

The longest recession of the low tariff era was 18 months, the Great Recession. From 1854 to 1932, there were eleven recessions that lasted as long as the Great Recession. In fact, the top seven U.S. economic downturns were all in the high tariff era. These include:

1873-1879

1929-1933

1882-1885

1865-1867

1910-1912

1913-1914

1902-1904

The 1890s, the era of the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, had four recessions in that decade alone. It is the same story with the 1920s, which was another top tariff decade.

It’s pretty clear that high tariffs didn’t help the U.S. economy, which was in better shape when we enacted the post-World War II freedom to trade reforms. During the mid-1800s through the early 1930s, there were more economic downturns, and longer ones. This resembles the recent market data, showing jumps when tariffs are paused or scaled back. In the same week, the markets plummet when tariffs were boosted or the specter of trade wars increases. Low tariffs not only boost trade and economic gains, but help forge economic partnerships, political friendships, and military alliances. Tariffs seem to do the exact opposite.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.