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The effects of teh Smoot Hawley tariff were relatively minor one way or the other and it actually had some positive effects. As to the Depression being inevitable after 1929 there may have been some actions that could have been taken to avoid it but they were in monetary policy and fiscal policy not tariff policy. In thew interim people who learn false lessons from non-factual history have tried to dominate the debate on trade. The Smoot-Hawley tariff did nothing to cause the Onset of the Great Depression and the fall off in US exports was easily attributable to the decrease in the business activity in most European nations that had started as early as the mid 1920's in Austria.

The above said I was not a fan of a number of provision of Smoot Hawley but argue the tariff on the basis of fact.

The effects of teh Smoot Hawley tariff were relatively minor one way or the other and it actually had some positive effects.

You are certainly welcome to have your little version of history. I'm not one who goes around pretending to be an expert. If you want to mock Jack Ryan, who went to Dartmouth and HBS and is 70 million dollars richer from practicing economics, and other folks who know what they're talking about, in favor of Pat Buchanan, or yourself -- well, forgive me if I don't consider you an authority.

The crowning folly of the Hoover administration was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, passed in June 1930. It came on top of the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922, which had already put American agriculture in a tailspin during the preceding decade. The most protectionist legislation in U. S. history, Smoot-Hawley virtually closed the borders to foreign goods and ignited a vicious international trade war.