Date: September 10, 1930
Location: Northampton, MA
(Original document available here)
The report that the Tariff Commission is about to start investigations of a wide variety of commodities will not give much encouragement to business.
The low tariff advocates first secured the flexible provisions of the law. When careful research under it showed rates were too low, with the exception of some agricultural schedules, flexibility was abandoned by its former sponsors. New investigations would probably reveal about the same conditions.
While we talk of a scientific tariff to balance the difference in cost of production at home and abroad, conditions change so fast that rates can be only approximate. We do not wish to exclude foreign goods but to give our people only a fair chance in their own markets under our scale of wages and standards of living.
A very bad tariff would be better than constant agitation, uncertainty, foreign animosity and change. We have recently had well over a year of tariff discussion with resulting injury to business. Hope for a purely scientific tariff will prove a delusion. Any prolonged investigations, covering many schedules for the purpose of rewriting the law, will do more harm than good. Many will be injured while none will be satisfied. And the country, will not be benefited.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge Says: Dispatches Written by Former-President Coolidge and Syndicated to Newspapers in 1930-1931 (Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation)
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of Craig Eyermann who prepared this document for digital publication.