[bayourod]

It read it in a book entitled "The Way The World Works" by Jude Wanniski about 20 years ago.

If you happen to come across a copy, it's enjoyable reading for non-economists. I think that was the book that introduced the Laffer Curve.

Jack Kemp might have been the person who suggested it to me. Somewhere I recall hearing it referred to as "the supply-siders' bible."

You won't agree with it if you are a protectionist but you might get some insight as to how us supply siders think.

[remember]

It read it in a book entitled "The Way The World Works" by Jude Wanniski about 20 years ago.

The EH.Net Encyclopedia section titled "Did Retaliation Take Place?" makes no mention of any pre-emptive retaliation. Hence, unless you can provide a precise online source that I can check, we'll just have to drop this line of the discussion.

In any case, Smoot-Hawley has little relevance to current discussion about free trade. The reason can be seen in the following graph:

The numbers and sources can be found at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/tariffs.html. As can be seen, the tariff rate on total imports was between 11 and 15 percent from 1921 through 1929. Smoot-Hawley raised it up to nearly 20 percent. The current tariff rate on total imports is well south of 5 percent now and nobody is suggesting that we raise it to the "good" level that it was at during the twenties, much less the "bad" level of Smoot-Hawley.