[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

The Smoot-Hawley tariffs only reduced American imports and exports by 2/3, so something like Trump's proposed 45% tariff should do wonders for the economy.

Milton Friedman on free trade and protectionism

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Milton Friedman - Imports, Exports & Exchange Rates

[central_va]

For those with any intellectual curiosity Smoot Hawley has become the whipping boy of the Free Traitor™ cabal but in reality it had very little impact on the GD. What the poster wrote may be true that exports were reduced by 66%. But 66% of what dollar value?

At the time of passage the economy was measured in GNP not GDP and the USA did not rely on trade to keep its economy running. Trade was an after thought as the USA was virtually self sufficient in everything as the Nazis found out a little later on. The GNP is similar to GDP and the figure not adjusted for inflation is 90B. So how much of GDP did trade represent? The answer is that exports accounted for $4Billion dollars which was around 4% of the economy, a tiny amount of the economy.

So if Smoot Hawley reduced exports by 66% then the USA lost $3B or around 3% of GNP, tiny. A 3% loss in GNP is not even 1% per quarter. It is not good but had almost zero effect on worsening the economy.