Free trade does little but flood the markets with cheap foreign goods that harm industry and encourage over consumption. Protectionism is a more acceptable economic model as it has a clear micro-economic benefit which offsets the cost. Furthermore, a proper protectionist system would allow us to replace the income and corporate taxes with a tariff-based revenue system - putting even more money back into local economies that are now operating on a level playing field.
Yeah because Smoot-Hawley was such a great idea that helped alleviate the economic crises of the late 1920's and Hoover won a landslide re-election.
Oh wait.............
The Smoot-Hawley Act was fairly inconsequential to the Great Depression, mainly because it tackled an unrelated problem (the primary causes of the Great Depression related to the money supply and the banking system, not trade policy)...
Secondly, let's not fall into the pitfalls of assholery; let's at least try to disagree civilly.
If you seriously think that levying over 50% tariffs on products, in the middle of an economic crisis when people have little money as it is to purchase goods, won't affect an economy negatively then it's a huge testament of your naivety. Also, you seem ignorant of the tradeoff effects of implementing tariffs.
US implements a bunch of insane tariffs, what do other nations do?
They implement their own and it drastically affects US exporters (ie US sellers who export their goods).
So not only is the average joe, who is forced to buy more expensive domestic goods, becoming more poor so are American businesses who would otherwise be making money overseas because of a crazy trade policy.
It should be noted that even Henry Ford opposed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. And for good reason.
So yeah, even if the problem SH tackled wasn't related to the Great Depression (which I find illogical to argue considering that the prosperity of American businesses IS directly related to the economic well being of the country) it failed considerably.
Considering that many foreign operations have moved into our country anyway to sell their goods, thus circumventing tariff effects, high tariffs won't prevent people from getting "cheap foreign goods" anyway. Hell, high tariffs would probably encourage makers of "cheap foreign goods" to move shop into the US.
Protectionism is a cute dream in the realities of today's trading world.It should also be pointed out that US economy reached it's zenith under liberalized trade rates. Now I won't be under the delusion that there was free trade in the 1950's and 1960's but compared to what it was in the early parts of the twentieth century it was quite low indeed. I myself wouldn't be distraught at a low tariff rate for revenue purposes. But the days of 25%-33% tariffs? No thanks.
Protectionism only protects domestic firms from competing in the free market at the detriment of everybody else. Free trade is asking them to play golf without a handicap.
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