The Narrative Arc

Why History Proves ‘Liberation Day’ Will Crash the Economy

My journey from Ferris Bueller to the Rose Garden

The burden of Trump’s new tariffs: American consumers and businesses will pay the price for this economic folly, just as history shows they did after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930. (AI-generated image).

In the summer of 1988, I spent my first extended stay in America. Fresh from the Netherlands, everything fascinated me — the vastness, the optimism, the cultural highlights that would become familiar over decades. I remember the first movie I watched on American soil: “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” While Ferris himself was skipping school to embrace life, his classmates endured an economics lecture on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act — possibly the most monotonous cinematic economics lesson ever filmed.

“In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill?” the teacher drones, as students fight to stay awake.

Watching President Trump announce sweeping new tariffs in the Rose Garden, I wondered if he had been one of those students staring blankly out the window during economics class, missing crucial lessons on economic history. His “Liberation Day” speech, declaring tariffs of 34% on China, 27% on India, 24% on Japan, and 20% on the European Union, displays a profound misunderstanding of both history and economics that would earn…