The debate over free trade is riddled with myth after myth. One that keeps resurfacing again and again, no matter how many times it is discredited, is the idea that protectionism caused the Great Depression. One occasionally even hears that the same protectionism -- specifically the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 -- was responsible in significant part for World War Two! This is nonsense dreamed up for propaganda purposes by free traders, and can easily be debunked.
Let's start by reminding ourselves of a basic fact: the Depression's cause was monetary. The Federal Reserve had allowed the money supply to balloon excessively during the late 1920s, piling up in the stock market as a bubble. The Fed then panicked, miscalculated, and let the money supply collapse by a third by 1933, depriving the economy of the liquidity it needed to breathe. Trade had nothing to do with it.
The Smoot-Hawley tariff was simply too small a policy change to have so large an effect as triggering a Depression. For a start, it only applied to about one-third of America's trade: about 1.3 percent of our GDP. One point three percent! America's average tariff on goods subject to tariff went from 44.6 to 53.2 percent--not a very big jump at all. America's tariffs were higher in almost every year from 1821 to 1914. Our tariffs went up in 1861, 1864, 1890, and 1922 without producing global depressions, and the great recessions of 1873 and 1893 spread worldwide without needing the help of any tariff increases.
If Smoot-Hawley had caused a global trade disaster, it would necessarily have been by triggering a sharp decline in American imports of goods subject to the increased tariff. Did this happen? The data say no. In the words of economic historian, former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission, and avowed free trader Prof. Alfred E. Eckes,
Official data show that higher U.S. tariffs had little impact on American imports. From 1929 to 1932, imports of dutiable and duty-free goods fell almost the same percentage, suggesting that higher tariffs had little impact on most trading partners... The sharpest drop in exports involved commodity-exporting countries, including some like Brazil, largely unaffected by higher U.S. tariffs.
World trade did indeed decline, but this was due to the Depression itself, not higher American tariffs. This is no surprise, as declines in the values of the currencies of America's major trading partners wiped away much of the effect of the tariff anyway.
In light of the facts noted above, it is, in fact, true that just about every serious economist or economic historian -- as opposed to the ideologues of the editorial pages or the think tanks -- who has examined this question in detail has come to the same conclusion. This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue, either: famous economists who have denied that Smoot-Hawley caused the Depression range from Milton Friedman on the right to Paul Krugman on the left.
The same fact can be ascertained by looking at Smoot-Hawley's impact on the world economy at large. As the economic historian (and free trader) William Bernstein puts it in his book A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World,
Between 1929 and 1932, real GDP fell 17 percent worldwide, and by 26 percent in the United States, but most economic historians now believe that only a miniscule part of that huge loss of both world GDP and the United States' GDP can be ascribed to the tariff wars. .. At the time of Smoot-Hawley's passage, trade volume accounted for only about 9 percent of world economic output. Had all international trade been eliminated, and had no domestic use for the previously exported goods been found, world GDP would have fallen by the same amount -- 9 percent. Between 1930 and 1933, worldwide trade volume fell off by one-third to one-half. Depending on how the falloff is measured, this computes to 3 to 5 percent of world GDP, and these losses were partially made up by more expensive domestic goods. Thus, the damage done could not possibly have exceeded 1 or 2 percent of world GDP -- nowhere near the 17 percent falloff seen during the Great Depression... The inescapable conclusion: contrary to public perception, Smoot-Hawley did not cause, or even significantly deepen, the Great Depression.
The oft-bandied idea that Smoot-Hawley started a global trade war of endless cycles of tit-for-tat retaliation is also mythical. According to the official State Department report on this very question in 1931:
With the exception of discriminations in France, the extent of discrimination against American commerce is very slight...By far the largest number of countries do not discriminate against the commerce of the United States in any way.
That is to say, foreign nations did indeed raise their tariffs after the passage of Smoot, but this was a broad-brush response to the Depression itself, aimed at all other foreign nations without distinction, not a retaliation against the U.S. for its own tariff. The doom-loop of spiraling tit-for-tat retaliation between trading partners that paralyses free traders with fear today simply did not happen.
The myth of Smoot-Hawley continues to poison U.S. policymaking even today, as it renders the U.S. government fearful of retaliating against problems like Chinese currency manipulation. But hopefully, the present controversy over free trade will eventually provoke enough public debate that this hoary myth can finally be put to bed forever. For a more detailed discussion of these issues, please see Chapter Six of my book Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why.
Ian Fletcher is the author of Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why (USBIC, $24.95) An Adjunct Fellow at the San Francisco office of the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank founded in 1933, he was previously an economist in private practice, mostly serving hedge funds and private equity firms. He may be contacted at ian.fletcher@usbic.net.
Suzan Song: Global Health Day Should Include Mental Health
Too often those that suffer from mental illness are marginalized and become victims of stigma. But ignoring or neglecting this population only hurts society as a whole.
The rest of the world calls tariffs by a different name maybe we should too. See Business Week magazine April 5, 2010 to see how China does it.
The banksters leveraged their bets to the hilts, and the slightest hiccup crashed the system.
Outlaw all derivatives again, force investment back to main street.
Diversify you main street portfolio if you want to "hedge" your investments.
Get it together Roy. When you post such contradictions it makes you sound not only like a typical confused conservative, but a little boy.
The author overlooks wall street margin rules of the 1920s prior to the creation of the SEC or the FDIC. You cannot compare these times to now as it is like comparing a bird to a rock.
The author overlooks the pitiable small wage of the Chinese worker individually. the size of the billion plus person economy is huge, but the individual income is small on average. Yes, a small percentage of well educated "wealthy" Chinese now exist and that is why GM can be profitable....in China.
Because of their policies the Chinese are the largest holder of our debt which, in effect, the author thinks they should now give back as a discount by strengthening their currency relative to ours. I don't know about anyone else, but that is not why I would loan money to someone.
Not a passing grade from me.
ever hear of the great recession of 1920? of course not because pres. coolidge cuts taxes and spending and prompted the roaring 20's with his pro growth, conservative policies.
king roosevelt however failed to see his predesessors wisdom and through his meddling produced a depression with unemployment in double digits for a decade.
does anyone study pres carters wonderfully progressive ideas of price and wage controls? government is not the answer it is the problem.
although pres bush 43 spent way to much, he did cut taxes and spur 6 years of impressive growth.
look up the laffer curve.
I'll save people the trouble. This, one of the founding documents for Supply-Side Economics, was drawn in 5 minutes on a cocktail napkin by Art Laffer. It never was anything more than a way to pretty up the old trickle-down economics of the 1920's, and re-sell them to the public.
You want to look something up? Read about RR's Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He knew what kind of cr@p Supply-Side Economics really was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stockman#Office_of_Management_and_Budget
in which he specifically criticized the failure of Congressional Republicans to support a REDUCTION in government SPENDING as necessary offsets to the large tax cuts, in order to avoid the creation of large deficits and an exploding national debt.
HAVE YOU EVER WORKED FOR A POOR PERSON?
trickle down works as does the laffer curve as proven by the doubling of revenue by lowering tax rates.
I would suggest you could personally accomplish the same thing by buying only US made or even locally made goods. If no one purchased the junk then it would not be made and sold here. If the government were not involved, all grassroots, then it would not even start a "trade war" and the winners would be US producers and the losers would be middle men. Sounds good all around.
Neocons practice "faith-based" economics. Logic and facts cannot convince them, any more than it can religious true believers.
Larry Kudlow even has them say a prayer on his CNBC show: "I believe free-market capitalism is the surest path to prosperity ..."
To them, free markets are right and moral, and all government control is immoral, regardless of the relative outcomes. They are philosophers, not scientists. They follow the prophet Ayn Rand, who ironically was an atheist, money and power being her god.
What has held the US back is the belief that the market is infallible and thus should be manipulated in the least way possible if not at all.
However, in real-world cases where some of the freest markets existed (usually as a result of US influenced dictatorship) economic "reforms" only resulted in higher rates of inflation and unemployment.