During the 1920 US presidential election, Warren G Harding campaigned with the slogan “return to normalcy” – a return to how things were before the first world war. This included deregulation and isolationism. He won with a decisive victory and in 1922 introduced the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, a law that raised American tariffs on many imported goods.

America and Europe

From our New York correspondent
7 June 1922

Most internationally minded American observers who were at Genoa or have been following recent events from Europe earnestly desire greater American participation in European affairs. Many thoughtful English liberals agree with them. But, curiously enough, many in America who share their hope that the United States may soon appreciate and bear her share of the world’s burdens and problems believe that participation by the American government in European conferences would at this time be futile and perhaps dangerous.

Mr Hughes is a man of principle, but Mr Harding is a man of expediency. There is no doubt that the administration would like to take a larger part in European affairs; there is no doubt that the financial interests, to which it lends an attentive ear, are of the same mind; and there is also no doubt whatever that financial interest to which it lends and attentive ear, are of the same mind; and there is also no doubt whatever that the mass of American sentiment is steadfastly against it. The huge majority by which Mr Harding defeated the Democratic candidate in the autumn of 1920 was in large part a reaction against Mr Wilson’s entanglement in transatlantic politics.

In so far as recent byelections and primary elections can be interpreted as bearing upon foreign policy they show a clear sympathy with the “irreconcilables” who kept the United States out of the League. The Administration, which shifts its domestic policy after every vote in an effort to please the country, would be even more incapable of a clearcut foreign policy.

On the Russian question of course the United States has a policy – as intransigent as that of France. Mr Hughes and Mr Hoover, the two strong men of the Cabinet.

A prejudice analysed
The popular prejudice against participation in European affairs is often misinterpreted in Europe. It is, in part, of course, merely content with the relative prosperity in America, a selfish unwillingness to bother about a sick continent so far away. But it is vastly more than that. The figures of private donations for relief in Northern France, in Germany, in Austria, in Russia – which mounted into the tens of millions last year and continue mounting – are one proof of that. To anyone in touch with the pulse of American life it is plain that the main reason for the hesitation to plunge into Europe is a kind of bewildered disappointment at the results of America’s last plunge. There is no confidence in America’s diplomatic wisdom. The ordinary American farmer has two strong convictions – first, that the Europeans are making a mess of things; and, second, that the Americans, while they were in Europe, helped to make the mess worse. He would like to help, but he is unwilling to sign more blank cheques. He is confused; the issue is not clear, and until it is he thinks it safer to keep out. Where Wilson failed, he argues, what reason is there to believe that Harding and Hughes would succeed?

There were during the Genoa Conference, when Europe seemed to be doing things on its own account, that American feeling was changing. The disappointing result at Genoa was tragic in its effect upon America. It did help still further to destroy the myth of a romantic France that could do no wrong; but tended to make the country still less disposed to mix in European problems. Yet other factors are at work. The discussion of the tariff, in which the New York banks that give the tone to financial opinion throughout the country are almost unanimously arguing for Free Trade, is very salutary indeed.

The Genoa despatches of Mr Keynes and of Mr Frank Vanderlip, the former president of the National City Bank, attracted widespread comment and had a profound educative effect. But the bewildered apathy remains, and while it remains useful American participation in European affairs will be confined to the action of individuals such as Mr Morgan and Mr Vanderlip. It will take some striking event to galvanise American opinion. If the French should undertake independent military action they would certainly be unanimously condemned in this country; such an act might well give the Administration the popular support it requires for an effective return to the councils of Europe.

The US tariff bill

By FW Hirst
24 June 1922

Under the proposed Fordney-McCumber Tariff Bill, which the Republican leaders hope to get through this summer, the United States tariff will make import duties on clothing, boots, and most of our staple manufactures almost prohibitive. To quote one paragraph from a very careful analysis by the New York World which lies before me:

Importations would be placed under a virtual embargo, thereby blocking Europe’s only means of paying off her war debt of more than eleven thousand million dollars to the United States. The economically unhealthy gold surplus would remain in this country – over 40 per-cent of the world’s gold supply is now in Federal Revenue bank vaults –instead of flowing back to normal channels and stabilising exchanges.

The World declares that the agents of the big industrial monopolies have lobbied at Washington with more success than ever before.

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Editorial: America’s new tariff

22 September 1922

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President Harding has at last signed the new United States Tariff Bill. The Bill, as is well known, conforms to the Republican tradition of high protection, but carries it to a higher power than has ever before been attempted, and considerably higher, one suspects, than most Americans like. How, in that case, it has managed to survive a sustained fire of criticism and is finally to become law on the eve of the congressional elections is a little obscure. As a vote-catching device nothing could have been more unfortunately conceived, and the Democrats are doubtless surprised and delighted to have a weapon with so sharp an edge put into their hands. Their chances at the November elections are now brighter, even though their victory could not immediately enable them to repeal the new tariff.

The Bill has been much pulled about during the year it has been under discussion, but in its final shape it is still the most extreme measure of Protection ever passed in an industrial State. It is hardly conceivable that it should last long, and already there are signs of reaction from the frenzied Protectionism in which it had its birth after the sensational collapse in prices and restriction of credit in 1920. It has been carried partly because the Republican party was committed to it, partly because the farmers had to be bribed with heavy duties on all kinds of agricultural produce, and partly because, in spite of a general feeling that the general level of duties was extravagantly high, no trade could be induced to admit that it really needed anything less than prohibition. The Bill, once it was introduced, was carried more by its own momentum than by any active belief in its all-round virtues. It has been carried against much public criticism, and may be followed, like the similar Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909, by Democratic successes at the polls. But, whatever its effects upon the internal politics of America may be, it will probably remain for a year or two as the expression of American tariff policy, and will have far reaching effects upon the trade of America with the rest of the world.

From a European point of view the Fordney-McCumber tariff is without any redeeming feature. It fits in only too well with the American policy of self-isolation. This is a policy which can be perfectly well understood even on this side of the Atlantic. If it were practicable there are many who would like to adopt it for England. But even if it were morally defensible to say that the Continent’s troubles are no concern of ours, and that we need not incur the odium and expense of mixing ourselves up in them, it is manifest to everybody that in point of fact that Europe’s troubles are very much our affair and that isolation would be the most dangerous and costly policy of all.

In America there is the same inducement to cut clear of a continent which looks like falling to pieces and much less obvious reason why isolation even for her, is impracticable. At least the United States would not starve, as most people in England would, if the whole of her foreign trade were cut off. But though she would not starve she would be a good deal poorer, and she could not profess indifference even to the loss of her trade with Europe, which still takes over half of her total exports and used to take more than that. How much of America’s foreign trade will be destroyed by the new tariff cannot be foreseen. Many of the new duties are described as prohibitive, and a good many more will become so if the President exercises his arbitrary powers of increasing them.

(All articles are edited extracts).