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To: Crucial
"Tariffs and taxes caused the Great Depression. Tread lightly Trump."

Completely wrong. The US had tariffs in excess of 20% going into the roaring 20's. And that hadn't changed when the Great Depression started in 1929. Smoot Harley tariff was being discussed but it wasn't passed until a year and a half AFTER the great depression started. And then it was only in place for a year before it was repealed and 50% of the goods were exempted.

At the time of the great depression, imports were only equal to 5% of our GNP. Yet industrial production dropped by over 60%. There is no way, imports caused that much drop in industrial production.

What did happen is that the Federal Reserve saw the money supply growing rapidly during the 20's. That scared them and they thought they should reign it in to be more like gold. They tightened money supply and when the credit dried up, there were bank runs and businesses failed. It had nothing to do with tariffs.

179 posted on 12/24/2016 10:31:10 AM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN

Tarrifs partly or completely negate comparative advantage, driving up prices in other sectors and costing America jobs. Is this what we want?


185 posted on 12/24/2016 8:33:03 PM PST by Crucial
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