[ex-snook]

Let me clear it up. Imagine if we were depending on Japan, Germany and China for importing war capacity to fight them in WW II. Thank you Smoot Hawley for keeping our manufacturing capacity to remain in America.

[dalight]

Let me clear it up. Imagine if we were depending on Japan, Germany and China for importing war capacity to fight them in WW II. Thank you Smoot Hawley for keeping our manufacturing capacity to remain in America.

Well, let me inject some troublesome facts into this concept that Smoot-Hawley protected anything.

First, the decimation of the limited world trade at the time paved the way for the rise of The Third Reich and provided the justification for the Japanese to secure oil and resources for their manufacturing and markets for their goods via conquest rather than via trade. The global depression provided the framework for the mass death event knows as WWII.

Smoot-Hawley did nothing to protect American Industrial might, but rather gutted it, second only to the stylings of Franklin Roosevelt who was perfectly happy to attempt to manage all of American manufacturing into the ground in the name of "beating the depression."