Others have sought to exonerate Smoot and Hawley, arguing that they were not responsible for the economic disasters of the early 1930s. “That the legend of Smoot Hawley endures and continues to influence the trade policy debate is a tribute to the public relations skills of partisans and ideologues with an agenda,” writes Al fred Eckes (1995, 139), a former chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission. Those partisans and ideologues “successfully transformed a molehill into a mountain.” Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan (1998, 247, 250) contends that “not one of the charges against Smoot-Hawley stands up” and the higher tariff “had an imperceptible effect even on trade, let alone on a national economy of which foreign trade was but a tiny fraction.”
There are subtleties and nuances to trade policy, but we economists are fond of poking fun of Herbert Hoover and his signing of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.
Maybe you’ve seen this clip from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Most of my students are like the kid half asleep who dribbles on himself when I lecture on tariffs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA&t=1s
To put some meat on the bone, look at the chart marked “U.S. Imports 1910 - 1940,” about 3/4 down the page.
You will see that the Smoot-Hawley had its intended effect of greatly reducing imports in 1930. Imports fell from $400 million to $100 million. Saved a lot of jobs, didn’t the Smoot-Hawley Tariff?
https://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/smoot.shtml
Now look at the chart immediately above, “U.S. Exports 1910 to 1930.” The Smoot-Hawley Tariff had the unintended consequence of collapsing exports by the same amount it increased imports. Roughly, it destroyed as many jobs as it saved.
This is exactly what we economists said would happen. In fact, we had a list of predictions, and we were right on every one.
As to the point that exports and imports were small relative to the economy back in those days, this is a valid point. So what if a lot of farmers and rural banks went bankrupt. So what if there was a dust bowl in Oklahoma and other states. Other factors, such as the collapse of the banks, were more important in causing the Great Depression.
Just because the government did just about everything it could to make the depression worse, doesn’t mean the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was the worst thing the government did. In a sense, I agree with you: the Smoot-Hawley Tariff wasn’t the worst thing the government did to turn what might have been a recession into the Great Depression.
