[harpseal]

That's a lot to read. The current appeal of free trade has to do with the Great Depression. When we could produce millions of Model T's and radios and couldn't find anyone at home to buy them, free trade started to look very good. We may eventually face another crisis because of free trade, but for the time being, it's hard to get over the lesson of that time. A country that produces a lot, or that owns factories elsewhere that produce a lot, is usually going to favor free trade so that more of those goods can be sold.

Since the Great Depression started before Smoot Hawley tariffs were intoduced and the Stock Market Crash happened long before the bill that eventually became law had its details ironed out the lesson is a false lesson.

[Wolfie]

Really, what's the point. Until people find themselves up against foreign workers who will work for 1/10th the price, they just won't get it (but they will, and I'm gonna get quite a chuckle out of it when they do).

[x]

You are right that Smoot-Hawley did come after the stock market crash and didn't cause it. But stock market downturns happen all the time and are overcome in a few years. Why did it take so long to overcome the 1929 crash? Surely, if recent experience is any guide, the Depression shouldn't have lasted as long as it did.

I'm no big fan of free trade, and I don't know whether free trade could have cured the Great Depression. Roosevelt's policies certainly didn't. But closing down markets with high tariffs was probably the wrong response to hard times.

Those who lived through the Depression and came to power after the war certainly drew that conclusion, and the argument that free trade makes recessions (and maybe inflation, too) milder is one that protectionists will have to take seriously.