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Jamieson Greer: “Smoot Hawley ended up raising the average tariff rate from…”

Featuring: Jamieson Greer, U.S. Trade Representative | National

From Hamilton to Today: Trade and U.S. Economic Strategy with Ambassador Jamieson Greer

Published January 20, 2026 | Video Starts at 11:51

They didn't have an inflationary effect. All that makes sense as America had been maintaining high tariffs for a long time. For much of the previous century, Smoot Hawley ended up raising the average tariff rate from 40 to 46%. Obviously, tariffs aren't a magic wand. They didn't prevent, they didn't reverse the Great Depression, but they didn't plunge it into something worse. (11:51–11:56)

CLAIM

Asserts that the Smoot Hawley Act increased average tariffs from 40% to 46%.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Jamieson Greer

“New Jersey lost almost 47% of its manufacturing jobs after 1994.”
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“American per capita industrial output increased 525% from 1750 to 1860.”
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“By 1913, US per capita industrial output was the greatest in the world, 10% greater than that of the UK.”
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“American industrial production soared by over 1000% between 1860 and 1910.”
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“Lyndon Johnson imposed 25% tariffs on pickup trucks that we still have to this day.”
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“President Nixon put a 10% global tariff on the world in 1971.”
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“We reduced that trade deficit with China by about 25% last year.”
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“Over the past year, there have been 650,000 jobs created. And they're all in the private sector and they're all to Americans.”
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“We're now down to 2.7 [percent inflation].”
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“Real wages went down by $3,000 over [the Biden] administration. We're already up $1,300.”
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“We're pumping more oil than we ever have and the price of gas is down lower than it's been since 2019.”
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“Canada put a big tariff on Chinese electric vehicles of 100%.”
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“Canada's GDP is 75% dependent on the United States.”
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“President Trump has revived [the American pragmatic trade] approach with great effect.”
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“This approach...has resulted in increased GDP. It's reversed the trend in our trade deficit. It's boosted our wages, particularly for blue…”
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“Congress...has delegated a lot of that authority to the President.”
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“Paterson [New Jersey] then became one of the poorest cities in the United States.”
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“President Abraham Lincoln was a strong proponent of tariffs.”
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“We protected our industry from foreign competition where that was necessary to unlock growth or to counteract Unfair production conditions…”
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“We leveraged the same playbook when we faced the challenge of a large trade deficit back in the 1980s due to non market policies in a…”
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“We bound our hands with NAFTA and the World Trade Organization in ways that made it impossible for the United States to effectively respond…”
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“The American system had become in some ways a global economic system, shaping the structures of economies far beyond our borders.”
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“The negotiators at Bretton woods and other economic conferences wrote new rules based on this and baked tariffs and trade measures into the…”
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“John Maynard Keynes, the British economist and the British representative to the Bretton woods conference, he had an idea for how this could…”
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“The GATT text is still the text underpinning the World Trade Organization agreements.”
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“Article 18 [of the GATT] explicitly states that it may be necessary...to take protective or other measures affecting imports.”
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“Article 12 [of the GATT] says that countries that have a persistent trade deficit can impose tariffs to protect the balance of payments.”
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“Article 6 [of the GATT]...says that countries can raise tariffs to respond to foreign subsidies or dumping.”
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“The international trade rules, as originally written after World War II, do not promote free trade as an end in itself.”
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“We allowed large non market economies into the world trading system, gave them the same tariff treatment as we did to market economies.”
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“The United States unilaterally disarmed. We slashed our tariff rates below the rates of nearly all our trading partners.”
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“The United States is now moving forward to fix historic problems with historic solutions.”
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“President Trump has increased these tariff rates and made deals to open foreign markets.”
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“In the United States, we have export controls, we have sanctions, we have prohibitions.”
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“Europe has done nothing to implement the trade deal.”
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“Europeans have not lowered a single tariff for us.”
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“The trade agreement...doesn't fix all of the agricultural issues we have with Europe.”
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“It doesn't fix the regulatory issues, which are hugely problematic.”
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“It doesn't fix pharmaceutical price.”
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“We have this massive trade deficit, which you'll have some people say trade deficits don't matter.”
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“Really exploded by 40% in the last five years, these are defensive measures.”
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“We've had very substantial tariffs on China.”
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“Our trade deficit with the EU this year might end up, or for 2025, might end up being bigger than our trade deficit with China.”
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“You limit our agricultural imports, you limit our industrial imports, and you have a huge surplus with us.”
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“We've taken measures to protect against overcapacity, certainly from China, they're the biggest offender.”
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“There are other Asian economies, Vietnam, elsewhere, who have a lot of overcapacity.”
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“The administration gave the court a clear pathway to find and favor the administration.”
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“The plain language of the statute authorizes the president in an emergency situation to regulate imports.”
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“There's an emergency with our trade deficit and offshoring, courts typically will defer on the emergency.”
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“The Trump team has been thinking about these actions for years.”
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“The president chose to use IPA because it is the most appropriate to the situations we're facing for the emergency.”
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“Manufacturing productivity has shot up over the past year.”
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“Manufacturing wages have gone up.”
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“Health care [is] subsidized by the government, so it goes up.”
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“There's oversupply in the world for most goods.”
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“Education, it's subsidized by the government, so it goes up.”
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“Energy, these are often state run utilities that are poorly run in many cases, so it goes up.”
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“Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution entrusts tariff policy to the Congress of the United States.”
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“GDP last year was at 3.2% higher than expected.”
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“It's projected for 5.4.”
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“American energy is the most dependable energy for Europe.”
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“LNG is something that is a relatively clean fossil fuel compared to others.”
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“Europe's continued reliance to some degree on Russian oil is...dissonant.”
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“The United States is always going to be a better source for LNG.”
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“The services numbers... are quite unreliable.”
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“We have a very good and reliable know sense of what the goods trade looks like.”
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