It may be a (S)moot point, but one of the lessons from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is that a major attempt by the U.S. to impose tariffs a century ago didn’t work — and actually made things worse at the time.
Remember the scene? Anyone? Anyone?
In the iconic movie shot in and around Chicago, writer, actor and economics guru Ben Stein plays a high school teacher lecturing about the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act of 1930, which was intended to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression.
The camera pans a classroom at the fictional Shermer High — actually Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook — of near-catatonic students. That includes a sleeping and drooling Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick in the nearly 40-year-old film.
Reed Smoot was a Rebublican U.S. Senator from Utah, Willis Hawley a U.S. Representative from Oregon. The act was a protectionist measure that raised duties on imports. None of the students could answer even the simplest questions posed by Stein’s character.
“Did it work? … Anyone? Anyone know the effects? … It did not work and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression,” Stein says in his famous drone.
In real life, Stein is a President Donald Trump supporter but an opponent of tariffs.
Trump, in a Rose Garden ceremony this week marking what he called “Liberation Day,” placed elevated tariff rates on dozens of nations that run meaningful trade surpluses with the United States, while imposing a 10% baseline tax on imports from all countries in response to what he called an economic emergency.
The president, who said the tariffs were designed to boost domestic manufacturing, used aggressive rhetoric to describe a global trade system that the United States helped to build after World War II, saying “our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” by other nations.
Stock markets around the world have plummeted in response to Trump’s actions.
Contributing: AP