Every promise made by politicians, even Trump, is premised on the idea that a year from now the world will be the same. Trump is product of his experience. Herbert Hoover was also, and when the economy tanked in 1930 Hoover turned to the past for his remedies. So we got Smoot-Hawley. The following year he was deeply involved in the international crisis and failed to come up with a remedy. You are putting a lot of trust in a man close to seventy hoping he would be as great as opportunist as, Lenin or Hitler, or indeed, Churchill and can seize the moment. I think back to 1940 when Wendell Wilkie was able to seize the Republican nomination. Wilkie had many of he qualities as Trump and had been a Democrat. In truth, though, he looked at the world pretty much as FDR did. Is Trump that much different from Romney et al, except he is as a brilliant campaigner as Romney was a dull one?
World trade "collapsed" but define collapse?
U.S. goods imports declined from $5.3 billion in 1929 to just $1.7 billion in 1933, while U.S. goods exports fell from $4.4 billion in 1929 to a mere $1.5 billion in 1933.
If these drops were so great and so influential, why doesn't Milton Friedman mention them? First, in comparison to the total economy ($50B GNP), foreign trade was a small part of the United States economy. Second, the total balance of trade deficit went from (0.9 billion to 0.2 billion). In other words, the United States was losing less money because of Smoot-Hawley. It was in aggregate better off.