During this time period, the United States had an average tariff (taxes on incoming products of between 30-40%. Most experts at the time understood that it was no longer in the US interests to have such high tariffs. President Chester Authur appointed a commission to make recommendations on what the Tariff level should be. The committed returned a recommendation that tariffs should be substantially lowered. However once the decision was submitted to Congress, special interests who wanted to protect specific industries gutted any proposal. In the end, the law that was passed by Congress was officially the Tariff of 1883, but the Mongrel Tariff Act, by its critics, was a mix of various changes that made little sense and overall reduced tariffs by a mere 1.5% on average. Arthur was not happy with the results and ordered the State Department to pursue individual agreements with countries to reduce mutual tariffs.