[rcocean]

Good Post.

Funny, I never heard about Hoot Smalley "causing" the great depresssion until the 1980's when the "no borders/no trade barriers" fanatics started to crank out their propaganda. Given the small percentage of US GNP that was involved in foreign trade in the 1930s it wasn't important.

I'd like someone to tell me how foriegn trade increased from 1938 to 1948. I don't think it was a lot, even though we were still in the depression in 1938, and out of it in 1948.

If trade barriers started depressions, why did Japan become rich? They have never believed in "free trade".

[Austin Willard Wright]

Whether the debate over Smoot-Hawley caused the crash is a secondary issue. The primary issue is whether it turned a relatively mild recession into a full-scale depression and belong before 1980s most economists have accepted that is a truism. This is why FDR and later presidents finally junked Smoot-Hawley.

Why did trade increase after 1938? Here's a good reason. By this time, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had finally persuaded FDR to abandon Smoot-Hawley and replace it with the pro-free trade policy of making Most Favored Nation Treaties.

[Calvin Locke]

I'd like someone to tell me how foriegn trade increased from 1938 to 1948.

Most of the rest of the industrialized world was in ruins, for one thing. I'm guessing that they had to buy stuff from
the US, with "loans" from US taxpayers, that is.