Tax and Consequences Talk Examines America’s Long Affair with Tariffs

Alastair Su, Westmont assistant professor of history, speaks about “Tariff Nation: Talk Examines he Rise, Fall, and Return of America’s Most Contentious Tax” on Monday, Dec. 8, at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Arts Workshop, 631 Garden St., in downtown Santa Barbara. The Westmont Downtown Lecture is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations required. Free parking is available on the streets surrounding CAW or in nearby city parking lots. For more information, please call (805) 565-6051.

“Once dismissed as relics of the past, tariffs are back with a vengeance,” Su says. “My talk traces their rise, fall and return — and what their comeback says about America today.”

Su, who graduated from Harvard before earning a doctorate in history from Stanford University, will offer a 250-year overview of how the United States imposed tariffs, starting with Hamilton’s Reports of Manufactures, got rid of them in WWII before finding support for them again starting with Trump’s first administration.

He began teaching U.S. history at Westmont in 2021, and is completing his first book about America and the opium trade in the 19th century. He was awarded a 2025 Graves Award in the Humanities, which will support his work on his forthcoming book, “Flowering Gold: American Capital and the Opium War.”

The Westmont Foundation sponsors Westmont Downtown: Conversations About Things That Matter as well as the annual Westmont President’s Breakfast in late February.