In her 2007 book The Forgotten Man, which traced the decline of the U.S. economy in the 1930s, author and syndicated columnist Amity Shlaes noted how that era’s economic cratering, signalled but not caused by the 1929 stock crash, was exacerbated by the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act. Named after its Utah and Oregon sponsors, the bill imposed higher tariffs on 20,000 goods from other countries.
That anti-free-trade law is worth remembering given that in the presidential election just ended, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton discussed little policy with the exception of free trade, which they both bashed.
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