About 95 years ago, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act aimed to protect American industries by imposing record tariffs on imported goods.

Despite warnings from economists, President Herbert Hoover plowed ahead, triggering swift retaliations from major trading partners. U.S. exports plummeted, global trade shrank and the Great Depression deepened, worsening global economic instability, contributing to turmoil that would later fuel World War II. It was a disaster.

Recognizing its failure, the U.S. reversed course with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, promoting international trade instead of protectionism. The whole episode serves as a textbook example of how trade wars backfire, choking commerce and harming economies rather than helping them.

But President Trump doesn’t seem to know this, and so he’s threatening a brutal tariff war with America’s democratic neighbors (as well as with China — less indefensible) while also abandoning the world’s most vulnerable by shutting down USAID and halting nearly all foreign aid. It is a master class in how to be both stupid and immoral at the same time.

The decision to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico has been suspended for a month after those countries threatened counter-tariffs and offered some concessions to Trump’s demands. Let’s hope that Trump pockets this fake win and does not return to an attitude that violates existing free trade agreements and would harm U.S. consumers.

Trump’s justifications for the tariffs range from the absurd to the incoherent. He initially framed them as a way to combat fentanyl trafficking, a scourge that has devastated American communities. Yet Canada plays almost no role in the fentanyl crisis, and Mexico had already taken significant steps to curb trafficking.

The real effect of these tariffs will be higher consumer prices, disrupted supply chains and job losses. Retaliatory........

© The Hill