[jveritas]

You premise is wrong. No one is saying that Smoot-Hawley caused the depression but for sure its prolonged and made it deeper.

A trade war is a disaster. Most of our import in dollar values are raw materials including oil. What we export are manufactured goods, food, machines, cars, very advanced equipments, weapons, software, and agricultural products. In other word a trade war will hurt our industrial and agricultural sector a lot.

[familyop]

"You premise is wrong. No one is saying that Smoot-Hawley caused the depression but for sure its prolonged and made it deeper."

The economic indicators turned positive in less than four years. That was not long at all for the Smoot-Hawlye Act to have positive effects. And contrary to the anti-American business opinions claiming that the turn-around didn't happen until WWII, WWII did not start in 1934.

[investigateworld]

Let's see now; unemployment is about 9% in my area, and serious underemployment is even higher too.

Just about all the major banks are insolvent, bankruptcies are rising, credit card defaults are rising, has anyone mentioned house foreclosures are rising as a percentage and and sheer numbers?

The free trade crowd is amazing, they really believe that folks who are using every bit of brains they go just to make simple widgets are going to become bio tech engineers or rocket scientists...

Obviously, they've never met the great unwashed masses.