[Toddsterpatriot]

So let me see if I've got this straight. Smoot-Hawley which helped reduce world trade and may have aggravated the Great Depression somehow protected our industrial base? How? By mothballing the factories because we had no export customers? And then we could bring them out of mothballs and the machines weren't all worn out because they hadn't been used in 10 years?

Yeah, I still think that's a unique viewpoint.

[Paul Ross]

And then we could bring them out of mothballs and the machines weren't all worn out because they hadn't been used in 10 years?

Not so much that, as that the industries themselves were still here, underutilized, but still up and running, with all the necessary structures and industrial and engineering know-how, and plant and equipment and a skilled work force that could easily expand production and switch to new tasks...just needing the capital and the "customer" so to speak...which were provided respectively by Lend-Lease and the military's huge purchases.