BTW: You should know that Smoot-Hawley is still on the books. It is still good law, but it has been relegated to the "back-up" punitive default trade position in the absence of what's called MFN...the coveted "Most Favored Nation" status voted by Congress. MFN came in with the U.S. adoption of GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was originally only with our Western Allies..it has been expanded radically since), NAFTA & WTO (WTO, the World Trade Organization... only came in under the last 9 pages of an addendum to NAFTA), CAFTA and so on, there have been a whole slew of exceptions carved out from it to promote a lowered tariff system.
These GATT and WTO Bylaws generally permit countries that rely on tariffs for their main revenues to maintain them, so long as uniform and not at prohibitively high levels. Smoot-Hawley's levels were essentially two-tier. A base 25% tariff for those whom we hadn't obtained specific reciprocity agreements with. And then those states we didn't like, or were considered serial trade malefactors...dumpers and subsidizers...or other miscreant discriminatory behavior...got a 50% tariff wall. This typically is sufficient to punish most of the egregious actors in the international playing field. China in particular spent UNTOLD millions courting the U.S. congress to grant it MFN status. It had been getting yearly approval of an exception from Smoot-Hawley. By getting MFN, it didn't need to be reviewed every year, and have its misbehaviors be subject to Congressional pique... and by being permanent, it saved the continuing UNTOLD millions of lobbying moneys that it had poured into the nest of vipers in Capitol Hill. These would-be World Rulers are frugal over in Bejing.
That didn't seem to work too well the last time it was tried, what has changed to make you think that it would work now?
How do you mean? Smoot-Hawley was a rationalization of the general tariff framework we already had in place, but added an overall systemmic increase in schedule rates over our baselines. This was a mistake at the time, as the U.S. was already subject to a huge monetary implosion. A third of the U.S. banks had failed. The money they represented was not replaced, but with those failures, just vanished from the economy. And then the Gold Standard forced a run on the U.S. dollar, as nervous types feared the dollar's convertibility would be ended (which FDR ultimately did)...and Hoover and the Fed moved to try and dissuade that with progressively higher interest rates on their Treasury notes, trying to keep foreign and domestic investors from converting while they could. Hoover had not favored Smoot-Hawley, thinking it went too far at the time...and he was right. But caucas politics induced him to go along and sign it. This further chilled the economy. With the Smoot-Hawley tariff increases at the time, it just added yet another barrier to the recovery of the economy. 33% of the U.S. population wound up filing for bankruptcy. But the liberal propaganda that Smoot-Hawley "caused" the Great Depression, is in fact erroneous. It basically contributed, however, to the factors preventing recovery...and it being a global collapse...not just U.S. this didn't help. It was like "piling on", and further dried up economic activity. The FDR crowd went out of their way to improperly blame Smoot-Hawledy (which was GOP the whole way) for things it hadn't done, so that they could pin the blame on the GOP for causing the Great Depression. The Democrats had long opposed tariffs, all of the general ones..which had in fact caused no recessions let alone depressions..., and explicitly opposed Smoot-Hawley, wanting instead their Progressive Income Taxes increased on those rich people. All so as to redistribute money. They were right about Smoot-Hawley ...but for the wrong reasons...and only as a matter of timing on this one. Otherwise they were full of it, as have been almost all the free trade crowd.
They couldn't get a treaty through the Senate with its' 2/3rds requirement, so they went the "Agreement" route, which is non-Constitutional. To date, no one has challenged it. (It may be coming up in the Timber Exporters case challenge to NAFTA, we'll see, I haven't had a chance to read their pleadings yet.) Based on that faulty GATT precedent, where MFN (by simple majority vote) gives a nation so blessed, freedom from the Smoot-Hawley scheduled duties.
So anyways, really, the burden of proof is on you. It's not what has changed to justify terminating the socialist redistributionary shell-game of income taxes and going to a consumption tax that rewards production, investment and saving. What HASN'T changed?
If I start a business why can I not start it in Asia? I have a friend that did this very thing. He started a software company and found the best programmers at the best rate in India and he moved the whole business to Singapore. There is no corporate income tax and personal income tax is 15% FLAT.
If you want jobs in the US just adopt the tax policies of our adversaries. He also said his top programmers are beginning to cost as much as Americans but the regulations and tax policies are too punishing in the US to bring it inshore. This business will remain offshore. The overhead including a taxes is just too much. He is not about to hire an EEOC compliance officer :)