It is, to put it mildly, a challenge to write an interesting and lively history of tariff policy. In his graceful study of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, economist Douglas Irwin successfully rises to the task. His book's four chapters provide a concise account of the history of Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley's “infamous legislation,” clarifying its political and economic impact on the Great Depression (3). Scholars of the period will find much that is valuable in Irwin's analytical and readable narrative.

Relying on a close examination of the Congressional Record, Irwin's first and, at ninety pages, longest chapter traces the debates that ultimately produced the Tariff Bill of 1930. Irwin emphasizes the deeply political nature of policymaking, as sectional interests, mobilized within the House and Senate, jockeyed to shape the tariff. The origins of the Smoot-Hawley tariff can be found, Irwin argues, in 1928 election-year promises made by the Republican Party to suffering farmers. Mid-western progressive Republicans, in particular, favored increasing tariffs to protect the agricultural sector, especially since the Republican leadership opposed increasing direct payments of government subsidies to farmers. Irwin's broader point, here, is to clarify that the Smoot-Hawley tariff did not originate in demands for higher tariffs from the Republican establishment (which in 1928 controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency) or from industrial lobbyists. It came from a desire to win political support from suffering farmers. That said, once Congress began considering the question of tariff revision it opened the door to all kinds of political logrolling and deal making. Irwin provides a vivid picture of the “legislative ordeal” and “tortuous path” involved in the eighteen months of Congressional debate over the tariff, as the House and Senate eventually arrived at enumerated rates on nearly 3,300 items (92–93).

In the next two chapters Irwin turns to a consideration of the economic consequences of Smoot-Hawley and the reaction of foreign nations to the measure. Irwin's discussion of the economic impact of the tariff provides an accessible summary and critique of current scholarship. He concludes that Smoot-Hawley was responsible “for about a third of the observed 40 percent reduction in U.S. imports during the 1929–32 period,” as the first years of the Great Depression devastated the world economy (142). Irwin is careful to note, though, that Smoot-Hawley “did not cause the Depression,” as its impact “was relatively minor in comparison to the powerful contractionary forces at work through the monetary and financial system” (142). Irwin believes that the tariff's main significance can be found in an examination of how other nations retaliated against this change in US trade policy, arguing that “the Smoot-Hawley tariff was very damaging from the standpoint of US commerce because it led other countries to pursue trade polices that explicitly discriminated against the United States” (144). Irwin faults US politicians for their narrow domestic focus, noting at one point, “While there are twenty pages of debate in the Congressional Record on the import duty to be imposed on tomatoes, there is very little consideration of the international reaction to the higher tariffs” (145). This indifference to foreign affairs, Irwin argues, “helped poison international trade relations” (183).

In his fourth and final chapter Irwin examines the aftermath of the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Perhaps the tariff's most important legacy was the subsequent consolidation of authority for trade policy negotiations within the executive branch, accomplished through the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) of 1934. This legislation, passed by the Democratic Congress that was elected in 1932 and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, signaled, as Irwin puts it, “that the Democratic Congress was willing to forego [sic] the business of tariff logrolling and take a more limited role in the making of trade policy” (199). The approach outlined by the RTAA gave the President the power to make significant reductions (up to 50 percent) in import duties in negotiations with other nations. It also marked a sea change in public policy, removing tariffs almost entirely from the domestic legislative arena and making trade policy the purview of the executive branch and the State Department. Irwin ultimately concludes that “the stigma of Smoot-Hawley is well deserved,” as it “failed to achieve its domestic goal of helping farmers and it backfired against the United States around the world” (221).