[CobaltBlue]

Adam Smith is even older than Ricardo. For that matter, the Founding Fathers are older than Ricardo. Guess that makes their ideas even more wrong, in your book.

As for the US "always having high tariffs" -- after the demise of Smoot-Hawley, the US became the richest nation on earth, and remains so today.

[neutrino]

Adam Smith is even older than Ricardo. For that matter, the Founding Fathers are older than Ricardo. Guess that makes their ideas even more wrong, in your book.

Some have been determined to be wrong - as witness our constitution, amended a number of times. Note that once Senators were appointed by the governors of the various states, whereas today they are directly elected. Times change, and we must change as well.

As for the US "always having high tariffs" -- after the demise of Smoot-Hawley, the US became the richest nation on earth, and remains so today.

The US was doing rather well from 1870 through 1910 - and tariffs were nearly as high as during Smoot-Hawley. Tariffs were reduced from 1933 onwards, but genuine recovery didn't occur until WW 2. So your correlation seems rather poor.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

As for the US "always having high tariffs" -- after the demise of Smoot-Hawley, the US became the richest nation on earth, and remains so today.

Actually, not that you'd know, Smoot-Hawley did not raise tarriffs particularly much - it would have been essentially revenue neutral. The tarriff prices were raised by price deflation, since many tarriffs were not percentages, but prices per unit meausre (i.e. 5 cents per pound, or $2 per ton). As prices went down and tarriffs satyed level, the percentage went up.

And the US was richest long before Smoot-Hawley was ever conceived of, thanks to the long period of growth after the Civil War up to WWI.