Economics

Economists Invoke Great Depression in Warning to Trump on Trade

  • U.S. ‘paid the price’ for tariffs in 1930, letter says
  • Signatories caution against repeating protectionist history
Woodrow Wilson Center CEO Says Tariffs on European Goods Don't Make Sense
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To some of the biggest voices in U.S. economics, it could be 1930 all over again.

More than 1,100 economists, including Nobel laureates and former presidential advisers, have signed a letter warning Donald Trump about his tariff-heavy approach to trade. Many of its passages quote directly from another letter sent in 1930, cautioning against protectionist measures the U.S. imposed at the start of what became the Great Depression.