Tariffs are the tax of imported or exported goods, meaning that the country to tax the foreign country that is sending things in or the country sending stuff out to other countries. One of the thing that caused the Great Depression to keep on going was because of the rise of tariffs in the U.S. Tariffs contributed to the Great Depression because the rise of tariffs affected the U.S economy by decreasing the amount of import and export goods. The reason why it affected the U.S economy is because the U.S had a decrease in imports. Because of the rise of tariffs (taxes) charged when shipping their items to the U.S, foreign countries didn't want to pay that much to ship their products, so they decided not to ship any of their products to the U.S. Also, exports that the U.S send has decreased as well, since businesses don't want to pay so much in taxes. Because of the amount of decrease in their imports and exports, the U.S started to lose A LOT of money, which affected the economy be cause the U.S didn't have enough money to pay to help out the economy.