- There is no reasonable argument that Smoot-Hawley caused the Depression. However, it most certainly worsened the existing economic crunch. In automobiles alone the drop in trade that directly followed the new tariff as a result of reciprocal restrictions on U.S. automobile exports knocked a desperately needed 10-15% off sales. Even a 10% drop threw many workers (and workers in suppliers) into unemployment, among bad effects.
- No matter how many times the Republicans of the McKinley-TR-Taft period said it, Cleveland's 1894 tariff reduction in no way caused the Panic of 1893. The Panic had already started, and a good case is made that the reductions actually assisted in the recovery. The Panic was the result of the then severe business cycle, the Silver Act, and the McKinley tariff, whose enactment was specifically designed to reduce government revenue by limiting imports. (Republicans spent off the existing surfeit by giving it away to Civil War vets... a policy that was most damaging to good government, and created a huge political liability that burdened subsequent Republican presidents.)
- Protection works and it doesn't work. The question is balance. The McKinley (1898), Taft, Wilson (1913), and Harding tariffs were all effective, and the economy advanced despite them as much as because of them.
- Btw, be careful in criticising Wilson's entry to WWI while upholding TR, who pushed Wilson into it. Whatever the merits of U.S. involvement, the worst of the episode came in Wilson's egotistical and vapid aftermath, especially his insistence upon continued government intervention in the economy. Note also that Wilson's wartime economy was the progressive, a.k.a. Bull Moose, ideal. FDR used it as a model.
- Another problem I have with TR is his strategy to drive off socialism by adopting part of it. (FDR used the same rationale). That's not only bad leadership it's horrid public policy, akin to appeasement (_____ insert your own analogy here). I see no evidence that McKinley wouldn't have adopted many -- not all -- of the Roosevelt "reforms," although it is certain that McKinley would never have employed the TR rhetoric which only led to a demand for more and more extreme reform. TR had no clue about managing an economy. He viewed the tariff solely as a political instrument. His demands for inheritance and income taxes, too, were politically driven, and in utter ignorance of their economic impact. The only thing he really understood about the income tax was its empowerment of the national government.