In the late 1800's Russian corn was dirt cheap, so much so that German farmers were suffering huge losses. A Berlin paper wrote, "The Russians are perfect barbarians; They sell corn in our markets for next to nothing." The Farmers appealed to their friends in the government and got a large tariff placed on the import of Russian corn. The ironic thing is that the Russians had just decided to lower their tariffs on the import of German steel and chemicals, two of Germany's main exports at the time, and still today.
The Russian Government asked the German government to remove or reduce the tariff on corn because they had reduced their tariffs on German imports. Germany said they would think about it and nothing came of it. After some absurd request from the Germans the Russians decided to fight fire with fire and raised their tariffs on German imports.
The full article can be found here and starts near the bottom of the page.
Matt
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