[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.

[CobaltBlue]

The US wasn't richest in the 19th century, that was Great Britain. But we were quite well off then.

The worst thing about Smoot-Hawley was that it triggered retaliatory tariffs in other countries, aka "beggar-thy-neighbor." Also, raising prices in a depression was a monumentally stupid thing to do, especially when the world was experiencing massive deflation.

Hoover, for reasons nobody has ever been able to explain to my understanding, thought that the way to deal with deflation was to raise prices, or at least not cut them, so his policy was for farmers and factories not to cut prices and labor not to cut wages. Insane.