Posted on 03/09/2018 11:21:50 AM PST by TBP
President Trump may have lost his chief economic adviser over the trade war he’s hatching with China. It looks, though, like he gained one recruit — Charles “Smoot” Schumer.
Schumer was nicknamed “Smoot Schumer” some years ago for Utah’s Reed Smoot, a notorious protectionist. The Smoot-Hawley tariff act, passed in 1930, helped precipitate the Great Depression.
America spent decades overcoming the consequences of the error. Not until Trump, though, did a president win office on such a pointedly protectionist platform.
Trump announced last week he was going to start with tariffs on steel and aluminum. It humiliated National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, a free trader. So the ex-No. 2 at Goldman Sachs announced he’s quitting.
Cohn, a Democrat, wasn’t the only one opposing the tariffs. Some of the savviest Republicans in Trump’s informal brain trust, like economist Lawrence Kudlow, have long been warning against tariffs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Too late. They’ve decided we can tax our way to prosperity.
Weren’t the tariffs put in place after the GD had started?
Ah yes, that old tired canard. Total BS.
Maybe Schumer can be Trump’s VP in 2020?
Don't confuse TBP with facts...
They were put in place after the 1929 crash, but before it became a great depression.
So what do you think caused it? Capitalism?
The historical evidence that Smoot-Hawley had a LOT to do with it is extremely strong.
I suggest everyone crying Smoot-Hawley go read about the tariff’s origin in the 1920’s-30’s when it was actually made law, and then look at todays circumstances.
President Trump is working for the people of this country.
In order for that to be true, Smoot-Hawley must have been the only law capable of time travel.
The left always argued it was a canard, while conservative economists argued it wasn't. We have now reach the point in the U.S. where Marxism reins unchallenged.
Obviously Smoot Hawley did nothing to end the Great Depression.
No, they were put in place in 1930. There had been a “crash” late in ‘29, but like other depressions, it hadn’t really taken hold until the government decided to “do something.”
The reason that that happened is that Hoover was a progressive (FDR even more so.) Coolidge had been VP for the depression of the early ‘20s. The government stood by idly and did nothing, and it corrected itself about a year to a year and a half in.
Then the Coolidge-Mellon tax cuts (and spending cuts) turned the recovery from it into a boom — until the progressive Hoover got into office.
A stock market crash happened in late 1929. That didn’t mean we had to have a decade-long depression?
If Chuck Schumer’s (qualified) support for tariffs automatically makes tariffs wrong, then what are we to make of Bill Clinton’s enthusiastic support for repealing tariffs and promoting “free trade agreements”? The ad hominem argument of “bad person/idiot supports X, therefore X must be wrong” is a poor one because you can always find some bad person or idiot somewhere to favor any position or view (albeit usually for the wrong reasons).
How is raising taxes helping the country?
You seem to be very confused about your US history. FDR was opposed to Smoot-Hawley, he ran as a free trade opponent of Hoover. In fact, FDR is the one most responsible for the myth that Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Depression.
The stock market crash was the bursting of a speculative bubble. Speculation inflated the value of many company's stocks far above what their assets were conceivably worth. Additionally, the stock bubble encouraged banks to take money out of low-risk securities and put them into high-risk securities. It was much like what happened in 2008, only worse. Or do you think that tariffs caused the 2008 real estate market collapse too?
Isn't it great we are enacting George H.W. Bush-approved policies!
GHWB was a free trader. NAFTA and GATT negotiations started under his watch. Bill Clinton just finished the job.
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