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The Hawley-Smoot Tariff raised average U.S. tariff rates by approximately 18 percent. The largest increases were on agricultural products, on which average tariff rates increased by about 57 percent. President Herbert Hoover’s signing of the tariff bill on June 17, 1930, climaxed a political struggle that had lasted more than a year. Proponents of higher tariff rates had hoped in particular to give relief to farmers, whose incomes generally had lagged during the prosperity of the 1920’s. More generally, they hoped that protection from foreign competition would allow U.S. producers to avoid production cutbacks and layoffs as the Great Depression began to unfold.