Protectionism Through History
Modern protectionism has cycled. The 1815-1846 Corn Laws era. The 1860-1879 free-trade decades. The late-19th-century tariff revival (Bismarck 1879, McKinley 1890). The catastrophic Smoot-Hawley era of the 1930s. The 1945-2008 post-war liberalization. The post-2018 retrenchment driven by US-China competition and supply-chain reshoring. Each cycle has been driven by a specific combination of political, economic and geopolitical factors.
Key insights
The Corn Laws debate set the template
Britain's Corn Laws (1815-1846) restricted grain imports to protect domestic agriculture. The debate over their repeal — Cobden, Bright, Ricardo's comparative advantage on one side; landed interests on the other — established the template for modern trade-policy debates: free trade as efficiency-enhancing vs protection as preserving incumbent industries and political constituencies. The 1846 repeal launched the 'first globalization' wave.
Smoot-Hawley is the worst-case scenario
The 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act raised US average tariffs to ~60% on dutiable imports. Retaliation by trading partners followed. World trade fell ~65% (1929-1933) — partly Smoot-Hawley, partly the Depression. The episode became the cautionary tale for post-WWII trade architects who built GATT to prevent recurrence. The economic damage was historically large; the political damage to the open-trade narrative was even larger.
Post-2018 was a different kind of return
The US-China tariff cycle since 2018 is qualitatively different from earlier protectionism. It's bilateral, technology-focused, and motivated by national security/geopolitical concerns rather than broad protection of domestic industry. Average US tariffs have risen modestly (from 1.4% to 3.0%) — far from Smoot-Hawley levels — but targeted product categories have seen large increases (semiconductors, EVs, solar panels, batteries).
US average tariff 1820–2024
Average tariff on dutiable imports, %
Key Finding: Tariffs were the dominant federal revenue source through 1913. Smoot-Hawley spike (1930) followed by GATT-driven decline. Recent moderate rise.
Global trade decline during 1930s
World trade as % of 1929 level
Key Finding: World trade fell ~65% from 1929 to 1933 — a combination of Smoot-Hawley retaliation and the Depression.
Methodology & caveats
Average vs effective tariff
Headline average tariffs can mean: simple average across tariff lines, trade-weighted average, or applied vs bound rates. Trade-weighted averages naturally fall as prohibitive tariffs cut trade volumes — circular argument for declining protection. Effective protection rates (which account for tariff escalation through stages of production) are higher than nominal rates.
Why Smoot-Hawley wasn't 'the cause' of the Depression
Modern economic historians (Eichengreen, Bernanke) view Smoot-Hawley as a contributor to but not primary driver of the Depression. The Gold Standard mechanism, banking crises, and US monetary policy errors did more damage. But Smoot-Hawley's role in the trade collapse was significant — and political contagion ('beggar-thy-neighbor') was real.
Non-tariff protectionism
Modern protectionism uses many tools beyond tariffs: anti-dumping duties, countervailing duties, quotas, technical standards, subsidies, public procurement preferences, investment screening, export controls. The post-2018 US-China competition has used many of these in addition to tariffs. Tracking non-tariff measures is much harder than tracking tariffs; the WTO and OECD have data but coverage is incomplete.