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I’m taking a quick break from immigration blogging to hit something that is in my professional area of expertise: government revenue. (Why talk about that on a Mormon-themed blog? I promise it’ll make sense within a couple paragraphs!)
Possibly as soon as tomorrow, Donald Trump is going to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and increase tariffs on goods from China.[fn1] And he’s hinted at some kind of agricultural tariffs starting next month.
(Tariffs, by the way, are taxes imposed on imports. Technically, the importer pays the tariff. But it doesn’t really matter who remits payment to the government—what we care about is the incidence of the tariff (that is, who bears the cost). And there is universal agreement[fn2] that ultimately, consumers in the country imposing the tariff bear the cost of the tariff. Why? Because importer passes through some or all of the cost of the tariffs, which ends up being borne by US retailers and/or consumers.)
The current proposed tariffs would represent a tax increase of about $1,200 on US households. (Any additional tariffs would increase that tax bill by even more.)
So let’s get to the Mormon connection: in the early 20th century, Mormons were huge fans of tariffs. Big enough fans that at least one newspaper dubbed Reed Smoot, Utah senator and member of the Quorum of the Twelve, the “arch-apostle of high tariffs.” (I spend several pages on Smoot’s tax views, including on the income tax, sales tax, and tariffs, in Between the Temple and the Tax Collector [Amazon | Bookshop | UI Press], which was published last week.)
And why did Mormons like tariffs? Two words: beet sugar. In 1889, the church incorporated the Utah Sugar Company to grow sugar beets. By the early 1900s, the church had expanded its sugar beet empire to Idaho, creating more corporations and opening more factories.
But sugar beets couldn’t compete with cane sugar from the Caribbean. Or, at least, it couldn’t compete on its own. But with “adequate tariff protection,” beet sugar would do just fine in the US.
In the early 20th century, then, there was a significant debate between sugar beet producers and “free sugar” proponents (that is, people who advocated eliminating the tariff on imports of cane sugar).
And Reed Smoot (and the Mormon church) fell squarely on the side of tariffs, in the interest of protecting Utah’s and the church’s sugar profits. (Smoot also worked in a woolen mill prior to becoming a senator, and also wanted tariffs on imported wool.)
Smoot’s support for tariffs stayed with him his whole political career, up through the disastrous 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff.[fn3] This tariff increased exacerbated the Great Depression, and two years later, Smoot lost his Senate seat.
Did Smoot’s and the church’s support of tariffs benefit Utah and the church? (And to be clear, even the Salt Lake Tribune, at the time deeply opposed to Smoot and not a big fan of the church, supported Smoot’s stand on tariffs.) I mean, probably. It was protectionist, allowing higher-cost beet sugar to compete in the US with lower-cost (but tariffed) imported cane sugar. But, by raising the price of sugar, a portion of those profits came out of the pockets of US sugar consumers.
Is today’s church pro-tariff? I doubt it. I’m skeptical that the 2025 church has an institutional tariff preference. But the current populist pro-tariff world (one that includes Trump, but also included Biden) is one that will be expensive, both individually and nationally.
[fn1] On the other hand, maybe he won’t? He’s nothing if not untrustworthy.
[fn2] Well, except maybe in the White House, the occupant of which seems almost constitutionally immune to evidence-based ideas.
[fn3] Smoot was so proud of this tariff that he actually flipped naming conventions—generally, the first name would be the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which would have been Rep. Hawley.
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