It's Smoot-Hawley all over again! At least by this reporter's calculations, the sweeping tariff regime that President Trump unveiled following the market close on April 2 literally lifts America's duties on imports to roughly the same level that the much-reviled legislation took them to at the start of the Great Depression.
The ultraprotectionist Smoot-Hawley Act is widely blamed for deepening and prolonging the worst chapter in U.S. economic history. In a 1993 debate with independent presidential candidate Ross Perot on Larry King Live, then VP and free-trade advocate Al Gore brought an antique picture of the two senators, mocking them for a disastrous policy prescription that "sounded reasonable at the time." Indeed, for the general public and a wide swath of trade experts, going the Smoot-Hawley route is the economic equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.
