Zalatix the Angry Liberal

Farming is widely held to be one of the biggest victims of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. American farm exports dropped - exports like wheat, tobacco and cotton.

There is one big problem with that. A drought that started in 1930 began to gouge deeply into American agricultural production. So whether Smoot-Hawley existed or not, America was not going to be exporting much food when their own farmers were being wiped out and large populations of Americans were approaching mass starvation. Imagine America trying to export food while farms were disappearing and the food supply was dwindling. The results would be obvious: a revolution. Any nation that exports food while its people are going hungry in souplines, deserves to be overthrown. America was dumb, but not that dumb. You can tell from here what would have happened to international trade in the agricultural sector, regardless of any tariffs. The “Smoot-Hawley made the Depression worse” lie encounters this reality check much like a sentence encounters an exclamation point. 

As for lumber and other non-farm exports that were supposedly affected by Smoot-Hawley? Well, you saw what happened in 2008 during the last economic crash: America and Europe suffered a big slump, purchases of both domestic-made and foreign-made goods slumped, and China lost 20 million jobs. No Smoot-Hawley tariffs made that happen. American and European consumers simply ran out of money. 

Interestingly enough, how did China weather the 2008 crisis? They saw a big reduction in imports… and they gained those 20 million jobs right back. Funny, how pro-globalists say this doesn’t work for America… yet it did work for China.