The Great Tariff Battle
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have trade tariffs ever worked? Dan explores a cautionary tale from the turn of the 20th century when Britain's Conservatives' flirtation with tariffs led to huge political upheaval and a truly disastrous electoral defeat. In this historical deep dive, Dan is joined by Duncan Brack, an expert analyst and policy advisor, as they discuss the historical implications and public sentiment surrounding tariffs as the world grapples with a very similar situation today.
Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's Historyhead. |
| 0:03.0 | This is the story of a globally dominant economic power. |
| 0:08.0 | It's a story of how after decades of enormous growth, of wealth creation, |
| 0:14.0 | that nation's hitherto unshakable commitment to free trade began to crack. Other nations were emerging as competitors. |
| 0:25.3 | They were selling goods cheaper. Industries were suffering. Their workforces laid off. |
| 0:33.3 | And against that backdrop, that great nation turned to the question of tariffs. |
| 0:40.4 | I'm talking obviously about Britain at the end of the 19th century. |
| 0:43.6 | A great economic power that was now facing new challenges, was facing threats from rising powers, |
| 0:49.2 | and was looking for opportunities to raise revenue, to pay for social programs. |
| 0:55.4 | The Conservative Party, in particular the Conservative Party that was in power at the end of the 19th century, largely turned to tariffs, although in doing so, they tore themselves apart. |
| 1:04.7 | And with the Conservative Party in the state of, frankly, in civil war, in the 1906 general election, the British public inflicted one of the |
| 1:11.9 | greatest defeats in electoral history upon that Conservative Party. The British public |
| 1:18.5 | sort of comprehensively rejected Taras. They rejected the prospect of more expensive food. |
| 1:24.7 | But beyond that, they also rejected the idea that tariffs represented of turning |
| 1:29.1 | inwards, of giving up on a dream of a world in which the great nations could get along with each |
| 1:36.4 | other at peace, collaborating with low barriers to trade, to exchange and cooperation. This is a podcast all about tariffs, how the British |
| 1:49.3 | right flirted with them just over a century ago and paid a terrible price, thrown out of power |
| 1:56.1 | for a generation. To come and tell me that story in this fateful week when the global economies |
| 2:02.0 | are reeling from the impact of Trump's tariffs, I've got Duncan Brack. He's an expert analyst and |
| 2:07.2 | policy advisor focusing on the interaction between trade and environmental issues. He's editor of the |
| 2:12.5 | Journal of Liberal History and has published a couple of articles on this exact subject, |
| 2:17.2 | Liberals and free trade |
... |
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