Global News Winnipeg: History can help us try to understand Donald Trump’s tariffs, professor says

Fact checkers quickly rushed to rule whether or not the law boosted or depressed the U.S. economy, while social media was quickly flooded with clips from the classic film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, featuring the protagonist in class learning about the act, with his teacher blaming then-U.S. president Herbert Hoover’s act for making the Great Depression worse.

University of Manitoba history instructor George Buri disagrees with that assertion, stating its effects were quite insignificant.

Shedding light on the behind-the-scenes of that famous movie scene, Buri reveals that the Ben Stein, the actor that played Buellers teacher, was a free market economist and a conservative before he turned comedian. During the movie’s production, he was actually told to give a boring lesson by the director.

Buri finds it interesting that he gave that lecture, because it is a direct reflection of what was being preached during the 1980s in the era of Thatcher and Reagan, a time when Keynesian policies and government intervention was seen as a thing of the past. Buri believed it was a lack of demand that caused the Great Depression, not tariffs.

To read the entire article, please follow the link to Global News Winnipeg.