[RegulatorCountry]

While I know that it's become sort of "common knowledge" that Smoot-Hawley set off a trade war, I'm going to have to quote Reagan on you here, sorry: "It isn't so much that liberals free traders are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so."

I challenge you to go look at trade data from that era and show me just how the United States was exporting or importing in any meaningful way whatsoever. It wasn't. The Great Depression absolutely was not caused by tariffs.

[arthurus]

Read some Economics. Henry Hazlitt is a good introduction to the subject. He is succinct and thorough. Economics in One Lesson is a short book. If you read it and understand it- it is written in plain English, not jargon- you will not be able to avoid thinking things through.

[arthurus]

Liberals are Free Traders in the way that Bruce Jenner is a female. Liberals use the term prolifically but what they call ‘free trade’ is more akin to what the high school history books of 70 years ago, back when schools taught history, called Mercantilism. NAFTA and the Pacific Trade Agreement are NOT free trade. They are managed trade complete with government and quasi government councils and agencies to carefully manage and control every aspect of trade to benefit certain corporations and conglomerates and, of course, politicians. Calling a cat a coyote does not make it a canine.