Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 418 of Frank W. Fetter’s September 1933 American Economic Review paper on the Smoot-Hawley tariff – a paper titled “Congressional Tariff Theory“:

With nearly every member of both Houses professing belief in the principle of protection, the question as to what sort of protection is proper and what is not proper was frequently raised. The tests that were advanced to separate the just from the unjust were many, and often conflicting. Despite a pretense in the debates that there was some objective test of national welfare, the record of voting on individual items furnishes much evidence in support of the cynical proposition that sound protection was that which raised the prices of things produced by one’s constituents, and unsound protection that which raised the prices of things made by someone’s else constituents.

DBx: The justly infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff was signed into ‘law’ on this date – June 17th – in 1930 by President Herbert Hoover.