Hard to say that the 1930 one caused the depression as the crash happened in 1929. Probably didn’t help though.
Yes, it is generally acknowledged that tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression rather than causing it. Trump believes tariffs ended it.
“The Smoot-Hawley Tariff act Helped? Hurt?”
Depression, according to wiki started in on Black Monday in Oct 1929, made worse when bank panics started in 1930ish. You got your money in the Building & Loan or Potter’s Bank?
Fun stuff found in wiki:
In April 2009, then-Representative Michele Bachmann made news when, during a speech, she referred incorrectly to the Smoot–Hawley Tariff as “the Hoot–Smalley Act”, misattributed its signing to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and blamed him for the Great Depression.[33][34][35]
Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.'s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. Economists and historians widely regard the act as a policy misstep, and it remains a cautionary example of protectionist policy in modern economic debates.[3] It was followed by more liberal trade agreements, such as the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934.
Our Dear Leader needs no idiots in the Legislature to come up with stupid ideas.
Opponents
[edit]
In May 1930, a petition was signed by 1,028 economists in the United States asking President Hoover to veto the legislation. The petition was organized by Paul Douglas, Irving Fisher, James T. F. G. Wood, Frank Graham, Ernest Patterson, Henry Seager, Frank Taussig, and Clair Wilcox.[9][10] Automobile executive Henry Ford also spent an evening at the White House trying to convince Hoover to veto the bill, calling it “an economic stupidity”.[11] J. P. Morgan’s Chief Executive Thomas W. Lamont said he “almost went down on [his] knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley–Smoot tariff”.[12]
While Hoover joined the economists in opposing the bill, calling it “vicious, extortionate, and obnoxious” because he felt it would undermine the commitment he had pledged to international cooperation, he eventually signed the bill after he yielded to influence from his own political party (Republican), his Cabinet (who had threatened to resign), and other business leaders.[13] After the bill became law, in retaliation, Canada and other countries raised their own tariffs on U.S. goods.[14] Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke against the act during his successful campaign for president in 1932.[8]
Looks like he had an idiot cabinet as well.
Stuff that happened before Black Monday:
As the House of Representatives passed it in May 1929, boycotts broke out, and foreign governments moved to increase rates against American products, although US rates could be increased or decreased by the Senate or by the conference committee.[8]
By September 1929, Hoover’s administration had received protest notes from 23 trading partners, but the threats of retaliatory actions were ignored.[8]
…and now someone’s checking to see whether 2000 seats can be found on rendition flights to El Salvador.
[tl;dw] message I hope most of us already know.
Any non-brain-poisoning website with this?
Lots of good criticisms of the Trump tariff but this article is one of the better ones.
