Forward by Bob Barney: Thomas Sowell is one of the leading conservative voices out there that Rush Limbaugh respected so he is probably one of the smartest minds since William Buckley.
Thomas Sowell said that broad tariffs risk causing an economic downturn
Legendary economist Thomas Sowell weighed in on President Donald Trump’s tariffs in an interview released Wednesday, saying that sweeping tariffs risk triggering a trade war and repeating the “devastating history” of trade policies that worsened the Great Depression.
The Hoover Institution on Wednesday released an excerpt of an interview recorded Tuesday with Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman senior fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution, from the think tank’s “Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson” series. In the interview, the acclaimed conservative economist said it’s “painful to see” the administration follow in the footsteps of a “ruinous decision from back in the 1920s.”
Sowell referenced the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which were broad tariffs debated and implemented in 1929 and 1930, respectively, in an effort to protect American industries from overseas competition in the early stages of the Great Depression. Foreign countries retaliated, causing a decline in global trade that economists now widely believe deepened the Depression.
He went on to say that if Trump’s tariffs are intended as short-term, limited measures to achieve strategic goals, they may be effective, but if they’re left in place over the long term, they could replicate the “devastating history” of a global trade war and cause consumers and investors to pull back amid the uncertainty.
In an interview recorded yesterday, Hoover Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell criticizes the tariffs President Trump instituted earlier today. Watch the complete interview with Dr. Sowell on @UncKnowledge with Peter Robinson (@P_M_Robinson) on April 15th, 2025. pic.twitter.com/i0Ver1QIp4
— Hoover Institution (@HooverInst) April 3, 2025