Word: tariff
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Times were tough in Walla Walla, Wash, (pop. 15,976) in the spring of 1932. The tariff wall which Canada hoisted in the early '205 had finally cut off the valley's chief market for fresh fruits, asparagus, tomatoes. Moreover, its wheat was going begging at 50? a bushel...
...foes hoped to nail his political hide to that barn door, they reckoned without the old Tennessean. To Chicago he went last week with figures in his fist and proceeded to belabor the short-winded old Smoot-Hawley protective tariff scheme, which since 1930 (when it threw up the highest international trade barriers in U. S. history) has lost some of its fighting trim...
...Constitutional prerogative of the U. S. Senate is the right to ratify all U. S. treaties with foreign Governments. And one of the chores the Congress as a whole has most enjoyed is the writing of tariff bills. Under the New Deal the key to both these powers has rested in the slightly baggy coat pocket of pale, poker-faced Cordell Hull, Secretary of State. By calling the reciprocal trade pacts "agreements" and not "treaties," he kept them out of the Senate; by adopting the most-favored-nation principle in the trade agreements, he kept Congress' porky hands...
...Kansas complained in a letter to Mr. Hull that the proposed Argentine trade agreement would injure the U. S. farmer and cattleman. Last week he got back a restrained but politely savage answer that it was "folly compounded" for farm spokesmen in the light of the Smoot-Hawley tariff experience, "still to cling to the delusion that the farmer has something to gain from embargo or tariffs...
...fact, Taft was too scrupulous for his own good. In his private letters he said the things he should have said in public. He was almost smug about refusing to use his patronage powers to bring Congressmen into line. He outmaneuvered the silken Senator Nelson Aldrich on the tariff, forced substantial cuts, then watched the whole country go hog-wild over a headline which twisted a few forthright words in one of his speeches. The muckrakers were abroad in the land and Taft lacked T. R.'s flair for handling them. The great "scandal" of his administration...