The US has imposed protective shoe tariffs on Americans for decades, even with no domestic shoe industry to protect

Professor Mark Perry reports:

Almost all (99%) of the footwear Americans purchase is imported, so there is no longer a domestic shoe industry that needs special-interest protectionist trade legislation to compete more successfully with lower-cost foreign competitors. And yet remarkably, Americans are still paying protective tariff tax rates of between 37.5% and 67.5% on imported footwear as a legacy of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.

No word yet on this story from historically challenged Paul Krugman who tells us Herbert Hoover was a fierce advocate of laissez-faire.