3 days ago
Trump Tariffs Get Personal for the Harris Tweed Makers of the Hebrides
In December 1957, Reverend Murdoch MacRae traveled from his parish on Lewis and Harris, one of the Outer Hebridean islands off the north west of mainland Scotland, across the Atlantic Ocean to confront the US Federal Trade Commission in Washington. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's tariffs on woolen imports were threatening an exodus of the island's workers whose hand-woven tweed jackets, trousers and caps — beloved by Americans from Wall Street bankers to the Kennedys and Hollywood actors — were the lifeblood of the local economy. Little did MacRae know that his successful mission to shield islanders from US protectionism would be undone almost 70 years later by the son of a fellow Lewis native, Donald Trump.
'Trump might portray himself as a man of Scottish heritage, he might have used the family Bible at his inauguration,' says Iain Martin, a fourth-generation weaver, but 'that man doesn't care. He's out for himself, nobody else.'
