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It seems we have two MAGA advocates running against each other in the Second Congressional District! I think Rep. Jared Golden’s sponsoring of legislation essentially to implement Donald Trump’s proposal for the imposition of 10 percent imposition tariffs on imports from every country in the world flies in the face of history, the judgment of economists above the political fray, and common sense.
The historical parallel is clear with the disastrous Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930, signed by President Herbert Hoover under strong bipartisan congressional pressure, and in the face of a petition from 1,000 economists urging him to veto the bill. As noted by historian David Kennedy, the “tariff bill represented both an economic and a political catastrophe” leading to a worsening of the depression in the U.S. and Europe, and contributing to Hoover’s landslide defeat in the 1932 presidential election.
Golden refers to tariff critics as “overwrought,” a word that seems more appropriate for his recent stances than for the conclusion of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that the Trump proposal would “lower average after-tax incomes of U.S. households by about $1,800 or 1.8 percent.” Other countries would suffer even greater impacts, worsening the world’s migration crisis and further undermining efforts to deal with climate change.
Bob Rackmales
Belfast
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