The legendary economist Thomas Sowell weighed the president Donald Trump’s The rates in an interview published on Wednesday, saying that the rates that ruined the risk causing a trade war and repeating the “devastating history” of commercial policies that worsened the Great Depression.

The Hoover institution published a fragment of a recorded interview on Tuesday with Sowell, La Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow in Public Policies at the Hoover Institution, from the Think Tank’s “”Unusual knowledge with Peter Robinson“Series. In the interview, the acclaimed conservative economist said that it is” painful to see “the administration follows in the footsteps of a” ruinous decision of the back in the 1920’s. “

Sowell referred to the smoot-hawley rates, which were wide rates Debate and implemented in 1929 and 1930, respectively, to try to protect the North -American Industries of Competition abroad in the early stages of the Great Depression. Foreign countries retaliated, causing a decrease in world trade that economists believe that they now deepened depression.

He continued to say that if Trump’s rates are designed as short -term limited measures to achieve strategic goals, they can be effective, but if they are left in the long term, they could replicate the “devastating history” of a global trade war and cause consumers and investors to retire in the midst of uncertainty.

What is the term of Trump’s rates that involves an increase in prices?

Economist Thomas Sowell (Fox Business / Fox News)

“It is painful to see what ruinous decision of the 1920’s repeat. Now insofar as he uses these rates to get various strategic things to be resolved and that is satisfied with this,” Sowell said, “but if you create a trade war worldwide, which has a devastating story. Everyone loses.

Sowell said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office after the Smoot-Hawley rates He had come into force, pursued policy experiments in an effort to raise the economy out of depression. He said that this approach could be effective in a rules -based predictable system, but added that arbitrary and unilateral actions may create uncertainty that suppresses economic activity in the absence of a reliable framework.

What to know about the “Liberation Day” rates of President Trump

President Donald Trump shows the rates of his administration to United States commercial members during his announcement of the “Liberation Day”. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“It is disturbing in another sense. Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he was president in the 1930’s, said that you have to try things and, if they do not work, admit it, leave this and go to something else and try until you find something that works,” said Sowell.

“Now, this is not a bad approach if you operate within a known rule system. If you are the ones who do the rules, all other people have no idea what you will do next. And this is a formula for having people hanging on money until you find out what you will do and when many people hang on their money, you can get results like you during the Great depression of the 1930’s. “

Wall Street companies see the risk of recession that increases on rates, the trade war

Rates are taxes on imports paid by importers at the time a craft good enters the country, and prices are usually passed on to consumers. (Mark Felix/Bloomberg through Getty Images)

“So if it is a set of short -term plots for several limited goals, limited in time, well, maybe. But if this will be politics for four long years, you will try it, you will try it and try something else, many people will wait,” said Sowell.

“I think what happened recently when things fell substantially for quite some time,” he added, “and I know that several people keep their money before they do anything because they don’t know where they will go.”

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The 94 -year -old Sowell retired from his union column deed in 2016 at the age of 86. Conservatives and libertarians have requested that they receive the Freedom Presidential Medal for their work Economics and public policy Throughout his career.

The video of the Hoover institution said that the full interview with Thomas Sowell as part of the video series “UND UNCOMMON W with Peter Robinson” will be published on April 15, 2025.