Word: flex
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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President Hoover had searched the land over for a suitable person to head the Commission he expected to flex out the "inequalities and injustices" of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act. Scared of Senatorial inquisitions, men he wanted would not take the post. Finally he chose the suave, immaculate guide and counselor of his pre-inaugural South American tour...
...bill (TIME, June 23), obtained passage by the Senate of a resolution calling upon the Tariff Commission to investigate at once the rates on shoes, furniture, cement and farm implements. In effect this resolution said: "If the new tariff is flexible, let's see you flex it." The old Commission, which must be reorganized within 90 days by order of the new law, was thus confronted with a big eleventh-hour...
Provisions. Stricken from the bill was the Senate's Export Debenture Plan. The President's power to flex rates 50% up or down is preserved much as it is under present law, with the difference that he cannot determine for himself the degree to which duties are to be changed but must act on specific figures given him by the Tariff Commission...
Chorus of Dissent. Despite this historical precedent and veiled assurances that the President would flex out imperfections which even 'the Republican National Committee admitted were in the bill, a great new sector of U. S. industry called imperiously for a veto. Normal protestants against tariff upping are importers (i. e. department stores) who bear the brunt of higher rates, and political opponents who plead in the name of the ''consumer." Now the chorus of tariff dissent was swelled by a third and more potent group, composed of big industrialists who have saturated home markets with their production...
Confused at this adverse tariff turn, Senator Reed Smoot, in charge of the bill, marched back to conference, where was patched up a second compromise under which only the President would have power to flex rates on specifications (limited to 50% up or down on the substantive law) supplied by the Tariff Commission...