THE RACK: the story behind one VOICWAR design, with sources. The newsletter, TEETH, arrives every other week. Subscribe.
A thousand economists told him not to. He signed it and called it obnoxious while he did.
This is not a case of nobody knowing. It is the best documented case of everybody knowing.
May 1930. A petition organized by Paul Douglas and Irving Fisher and signed by 1,028 economists asks Hoover to veto the tariff bill. The final count runs past 1,250. In a time before email, more than a thousand experts in one field found each other and signed the same piece of paper to stop one law.
Henry Ford goes to the White House personally and calls it "an economic stupidity."
Thomas Lamont, of J.P. Morgan, later says he "almost went down on his knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot tariff."
Hoover agrees with them. He calls the bill "vicious, extortionate, and obnoxious." Those are his words, about the thing he is about to make law.
June 17, 1930. He signs it.
Within three years. Two dozen countries hit back with tariffs of their own. American exports fall 61%, from $5.4 billion to $2.1 billion.
He knew. He said so out loud, in those words, and signed it anyway, because the pressure to sign was worth more to him than being right.
That is the actual lesson, and it is not about tariffs. Nobody was short on experts. Nobody was short on agreement. A thousand people put their names on the correct answer and it lost anyway, to people who wanted the other thing more.
You are watching a version of this. You are probably watching several.
Put the name on your chest. Make somebody ask what it means.