A scene from John Hughes’ classic 1986 teen comedy movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is going viral amid Donald Trump’s tariff war.
The scene shows a high school economics teacher talking to his uninterested students about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a real-life bill signed by President Herbert Hoover in 1930 that increased tariffs on imported goods. The law, which is being compared to Trump’s recent actions, is often credited for worsening the Great Depression.
The movie character, portrayed by Ben Stein, says while teaching a lesson to his class, “In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?” When he gets no reply, he answers his question himself: “Great Depression.”
The teacher continues his speech, ladened with fill-in-the-blanks that his class fails to answer.
“Passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act. Which… Anyone? Raised or lower? Raised tariffs in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.”
According to the U.S. Senate website, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.” Hoover, at the time, proposed a “limited revision” of the tariff on agricultural imports to raise rates in an attempt to support struggling farmers.
Rep. Willis Hawley, who was in control of the House Ways and Means Committee, later ignored the farm component and continued to “raise industrial tariffs to new highs.” The act was sponsored by Reed Smoot, a senator from Utah and chair of the Senate Finance Committee.
As a result, trading partners raised their own tariffs which ultimately froze international trade. The actions reportedly destroyed Hoover’s reputation among other politicians, leading a majority of progressive Republicans to endorse Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running against Hoover, during the following election.
An overwhelming majority of voters also turned the chambers over to the Democrats, effectively removing Hawley and Smoot from office.
Fast-forward to now, and President Trump has announced that he is implementing a 25% additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% additional tariff on imports from China under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to address illegal migration and fentanyl trafficking, according to the White House website.
The high tariffs, the president hopes, will cause the neighboring countries to align with his policies.
The Associated Press reported that Trump said the taxes on imports on Canada and Mexico would start on Tuesday, March 4.
Amid the news, people on social media have been recalling the famous movie scene. George Mason University Economics professor Vincent Geloso shared a clip of the fictional school lesson on X with the caption, “Ferris Bueller is strikingly more instructive than 99.99% of political commentators on tariffs.”
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Another person noted, “Apparently it is once again time to bring back the lesson on tariffs from Ferris Bueller…”
A third wrote, “Ferris Bueller’s econ lesson is a classic, still relevant today.”
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