I'd rather have streamlined business regulations and a much simpler, more business-friendly tax code to really stimulate real business growth in the USA. In effect, make American businesses way more competitive in the export market.
Smoot Hawley wasn’t passed until 2 years into the Great Depression.
And at that time imports were only equal to 5% of GNP. There is no way that tariffs caused or even contributed greatly to the Great Depression.
Today, imports are equal to 16% of GNP and 23% of Americans are unemployed.
Gross Domestic Product (ref. 1929 dollars in millions) Year GDP 1929 101,444 1930 91,513 1931 84,300 1932 70,682 1933 68,337 1934 74,609 1935 85,806 1936 95,798 1937 103,917 1938 96,670 1939 103,736 1940 112,961 1941 126,237 Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Series 08166.
Year | Unemployment rate |
---|---|
1923-29 |
3.3 |
1930 |
8.9 |
1931 |
15.9 |
1932 |
23.6 |
1933 |
24.9 |
1934 |
21.7 |
1935 |
20.1 |
1936 |
17.0 |
1937 |
14.3 |
1938 |
19.0 |
1939 |
17.2 |
1940 |
14.6 |
1941 |
9.9 |
1942 |
4.7 |
Yep. I agree. Adding more taxes on the American people is what liberals like to do and it's a bad idea. I am also suspicious that 2M people stopped looking for work. That makes no sense. How could the workforce decline to 1970s levels? There has been a lot of population growth since then. This corrupt administration is just trying to lower the unemployment rate thinking average people will not notice the finagling.
Ah the Smoot Hawley boogie man.
Imports during 1929 were only 4.2% of the United States' GNP and exports were only 5.0%. Monetarists, such as Milton Friedman, who emphasize the central role of the money supply in causing the depression, note that the Smoot-Hawley Act only had a contributory effect on the entire U.S. economy
Without tariff we fund Communist China’s technological growth and our own economic death. We are in the Nuclear Age not the 1930s.