The Underwood Tariff, passed under President Woodrow Wilson, had Republican leaders in the United States Congress rush to create a temporary measure to ease the plight of farmers until a better solution could be put into place.

[2] The Emergency Tariff raised duties on most imported agricultural products, such as corn, wheat, sugar, wool, and meat.

[1] The Emergency Tariff increased rates on wheat, sugar, meat, wool, and other agricultural products brought into the United States from foreign nations, which provided protection for domestic producers of those items.

When the tariff was first discussed in January 1921, the records of commerce revealed that the US exported that month over 60,000,000 pounds of cottonseed oil to the countries of Europe.

[5][full citation needed] Wheat: wheat flour and semolina; flaxseed: corn; beans; peanuts or ground beans; potatoes, onions, rice, rice flour, and rice meal; lemons; peanut, cottonseed, coconut, soya bean, and olive oil; cattle, sheep, fresh and frozen beef, veal, mutton, lamb, and pork; meats of all kinds of prepared or preserved, not specifically provided for; cotton having a staple of one and three-eighths inches or more in length; manufactures of such cotton; wool, other than carpet wool; such wool when advanced in manufacture; sugars and molasses; butter and substitutes therefor; cheese and substitutes therefor; fresh, preserved, and condensed milk; sugar of milk; cream; wrapper tobacco; apples; cherries; and olives.