“A tariff would be short term pain for some and huge long term gain.”
Certain elements in our country have been preaching for decades that it was the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that caused the first Great Depression. In recent years I have read analyses refuting that.
It now seems to me that it has been blamed on the Smoot-Hawley tariffs to prevent us from getting that it was FDR’s leftardation that turned a run-of-the-mill recession into a global disaster.
And for those so deceived as to think that FDR “fixed” the depression, have a look at the movie “Sullivan’s Travels” to see what the Hollywood left had to say about the economy on the eve of Pearl Harbor.
Smoot Hawley caused or worsened the great depression like tea caused the Revolutionary War.