TIL About the Smoot-Hawley Act, Which was the 20% Across the Board Tariff That Deepened the Great Depression and Resulted in the Largest Senate Seat Loss in History

Fun fact! - this is what Ben Stein is teaching in Ferris Bueller's day off.
- Anyone? Anyone?

God let history repeating itself be a good thing for once.
- How about no. The only people who will suffer is poor people.

Great depression, and 2/3rds drop in global trade resulted.
I present also 1828 dementia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_Abominations which started southern secessionist movements.
Unjustifiable trade attacks like all wars are bad for unity. If California or Texas has to pay $10k more per car so metal and auto workers elsewhere get high pay, national unity fractures. Everything being super expensive with no jobs because of global trade retaliations, means that Mexicans stop being a unifying problem, and those white Michigan and Pennsylvania blue collar workers cheering for Trump are the problem. Better cars elsewhere in the world become a bigger national unity factor the more protection $ is spent on inferior cars.
- ... Ford begins furiously colaborating with Lada.

something something people who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it

Well they had elections afterwards. Trump's nazis will just throw dissenters into KZs and invade their neighbours.
There will be no free elections anymore

Tarrifs are billionaire cash grabs, nothing more. Nobody likes those. Except billionaires of course.
- Even the billionaires are going to lose money. It's just unjustifiably stupid.
  
  Some of them will get more power or money, though. They are not unified.
  
  They have enough money to coast along to buy and hoard failing companies and collect them for whenever the economy rebounds.
  Billionaires have so much money, they could spend a few thousand a day and it wouldn't hurt their bank account for decades.
  
  Every once-in-a-lifetime economic disaster I've personally witnessed has taught me that any economic loss for billionaires is only temporary.
  
  Let them lose enough to put them on the street with the rest of us. Hopefully it can humble them enough to understand that wealth should not be hoarded but shared for the greater good of society
  
  Some, but it does work nicely as a regressive tax to offset their tax cuts. It's really hard to see who's winning in the race to destroy the global economy, someone has to right?
- Yeah, look past the self-righteous grandstanding to see it for the big wealth transfer that it is.

We got a Progressive Era out of it, maybe we'll get another one?
Edit: To clarify, I'm talking about the New Deal and New Deal v2 Progressive Eras (and the era of Progressive Democratic supermajorities that dominated congress)
- We got a Progressive Era out of it
  Jim Crow
  Japanese Internment
  Religious revivalism
  The Wars on Crime / Drugs / Terror / Immigration, leading to the highest incarceration rate in the world
  Two major Red Scares and a collapse in union membership
  Intercontinent Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads
  Some progress.
  
  You really picked random negatives from a bunch of different decades?
  
  Jim Crow
  Already existed before that era and ended during it. Military was desegregated under Truman and the Civil Rights Act was passed under Johnson.
  Religious revivalism
  The Wars on Crime / Drugs / Terror / Immigration, leading to the highest incarceration rate in the world
  These things only really happened in the 80's, marking the end of the New Deal/Keynesian era.
  Japanese Internment
  Two major Red Scares and a collapse in union membership
  Legitimate criticisms.
  
  I mean yeah. That's the cyclic nature of politics, we learn a lesson and get a bit better, forget that lesson, get away worse, only to overcorrect and end up better than the first. We move pretty consistently leftward politically globally but only as a reaction to incredible periodic swings to the right.
  
  For what it is worth, Jim Crow predated and outlasted the Progressive Era in the US. I wouldn't so much apply causation there.
  But it also ended in the 20s. It mainly achieved Women's suffrage in the US.
  
  Jim Crow
  Before that was slavery. The Civil Rights act was the result of the Progressive Era.
  The Wars on Crime / Drugs / Terror
  War on Drug and War on Terror happened at the-end-of/after the New Deal Progressive Era
  Two major Red Scares and a collapse in union membership
  Xenophobia is nothing new. Again, the Red Scares were the backlash of Progressive policies, and marked the end of the Progressive Eras.
  The oligarchs in power want to make you feel powerless, they want to make you accept defeat, but don't surrender, you have more power than you think.
  Progressiveism and Regressiveism is always in a tug-of-war, there will be constant progress and constant reactionary policies, but the general trend (across the world) is towards progress. Monarchies have fallen, eventually Oligarchies will fall. (Hopefully towards a stateless egalitarian future)

The thing about Smoot-Hawley is that when it happened everyone else also put up equal tariffs among one another.
this time the EU, Japan, South Korea, Canada are only putting tariffs on the US. Not amongst themselves.

Every day of my life is an economic crisis.
- Is this implying if you with paycheck to paycheck it doesn't affect you? People playing with the stock market can afford to lose. This isn't going to hurt them nearly as much as those who can't afford to lose
  
  No, it’s not saying people living paycheck-to-paycheck won’t be affected. I think the point is - scary threat isn’t scary, because such people already feel the constant threat of poverty every day. Being regularly pumped full of cortisol over worries of simply surviving, there are no fucks left to give when additional threats are piled on.
  
  To me it looks like it sides with the paycheck-to-paycheck people. But you're getting a lot of upvotes so either I'm looking at it wrong or a lot of people are wearing the same anger glasses as you.
- Right now we're struggling to be able to pay for groceries tomorrow, after paying rent to a place that hates my family.
  If the stock market crashes, what's the real difference between my shit life with my family, and the shit life with my family if the stock market goes down? I'll have 0.0001% less chance to become a billionaire?

Proof yet again that "business leaders" typically don't know shit about shit.
- They LOVE massive depressions. They buy up real estate and failing companies cheap with their massive cash reserves.
- It is all 1000% on purpose.
  They intend to ride it out and profit from all of this, and we'll let them due to cowardice and division.
- This guy is no business leader- he bankrupt his own casinos multiple times and just stiffs people on payment. He's a grifter who happened to be born into money
- The so called geniuses of business have a better batting average than the average person but they are still prone to the same fuck ups and emotionally driven foolishness as anyone else. I was reading about the Theranos scam and how many supposed brilliant corporate leaders all threw big money at it without taking the time to investigate it first.
  
  If you have Hulu or sail the seven seas, check out "The Dropout" which is a mini-series about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.

Just throwing this out there.
If you expect conservatives to learn anything from this experience, I can promise you on my life that they won't. They will not deviate from voting R under any circumstance in existence.
Best we can hope for is independents getting a clue and helping swing the next election, if there is one, back to the grownup party.
Not holding my breath though. This is a very, very stupid generation of Americans.
- Conservatives hate learning, especially from mistakes. Learning makes you go "Why do we do this tradition? This is stupid."
  If a conservative learns something, its a failure of the conservative ideology. Keeping them dumb makes them unquestioning obedient workers and soldiers. You don't have a soldier disobey commands to harm someone, you don't have a worker disobey their boss.
  Conservatism is explicitly against learning.

We can't afford to waste this chance....
There is zero reason to settle for "not trump" we need to use Republican Inaptitude to get a decent progressive in power , there's zero reason to compromise with Republicans after this shit.
- People are going to say it shouldn't be her for all the same reasons they said Obama couldn't win...
  AOC is popular enough to get the votes, and she'll actually fight while in office.
  I really hope she runs.
  
  aaaaand youre wasting the chance
  
  Preferably someone who's qualified.
- They are already trying to setup Kamala for 2028. I have zero faith that the Democrats are going to learn anything from their failure
  
  They don't want to win. At least not with someone who would bring change. Why would they, they are all multimillionaires.
  
  That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. So I'm sure they will do it.
  
  They are already trying to setup Kamala for 2028.
  Who is "they"?
  We have a DNC chair that at worst will be impartial.
  And Harris has zero chance of winning a fair primary.
  The only way a neoliberal can win a primary is if the party hands it to them.
  The only way a Republican becomes president, is if the only other choice is a neoliberals.
  The only reason the Republicans have the house, is because of "victory fund" bankrupting stat parties.
  We really didn't need much, and we got it. Which is why we desperately need to capitalize and move the Overton window as far left as possible while we can
  
  I have zero faith in us having free and fair elections in 4 years but if we do then clearly the fascist threat has been vastly over blown and I'll never cast a ballot for either major political party again.
- Watch Dems shoot themselves in the foot
  
  Get ready for “we had to pass the $6T in tax cuts for the rich and corporations, simply nothing we could do!” 🤑
  It is imminent.
  They are robbing us absolutely blind here, and using the tariff chaos as cover.
- I don't know that there's a 'we' here, as the billionaires run the Democratic Party too and have sued for the privilege of holding undemocratic primaries.
  With that said, the SHTA precipitating the historic Senate loss isn't the only historical pattern working against Trump in 2026.
  Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden all entered office with control of Congress and lost control at the mid-terms, so it's highly likely that will happen again.
  
  , as the billionaires run the Democratic Party too
  No, neoliberals have held the DNC chair for decades. And they did whatever billionaires said.
  The current chair of the DNC is not a neoliberal. He used to be Minnesota's state chair, and if he acts like he did then he'll be the most progressive chair we've had in 30 years, arguably 50 years.
  The fight over the party already happened and the neoliberals lost.
  Don't blame the new guy for what the old guy did

The largest Senate loss in history yet
- Those that don't know history are destined to have a nice day.

Someone has either never seen “Ferris Buller’s Day Off,” can’t remember it very well, or didn’t pay attention. This was covered in class!
- In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?... raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. Voodoo economics.
  
  I watched this movie 3-4 times and even when reading this, I'm still spaced out.
  Ben Stein just has a voice that makes me tune him out.
  Such a great voice for comedy. Shame he's anti-abortion, pretty racist, pro-Regan and Trump, weirdly against evolution... So many awful perspectives.
  
  Worth noting Laffers claim had already been proven to be likely true by the time that was filmed. The claim is you can set a tax rate so high that it can encourage tax evasion, avoidance, and fraud and that reducing the rate below this level can bring in as much if not more tax revenue which was demonstrated to be likely true in 1983.
- Planet Money interviewed the professor who wrote the book from which Ben Stein is reading in that scene.
  It is an older episode they re-air periodically. I think this one:
  https://www.npr.org/2024/12/11/1218506684/worst-tariffs-ever-update
- I know it from the Newsroom

There is some nuance here. Smoot-Hawley didn't cause the great depression, and there a lot of economists who say it didn't have that much of an effect at all.
Tarriffs can have some useful effects when used for protectionism, diplomatic coercion, or trade barrier reduction coercion. However, Trump's tariffs are way dumber than anything that came before, because he's trying to do all three of these at once. All of these have conflicting effects on each other, and it is literally impossible to design a tariff strategy that can accomplish all three, since raising a tariff for one purpose means that you need to lower tariffs for other purposes. All he's doing by raising across the board is causing instability in the economy and convincing all partners to ditch the US.
- All he's doing is exactly what Putin wants. Systematically isolating and weakening America while weakening the West at large and any other competing countries to his power and new accumulation of wealth.
- and there a lot of economists who say it didn’t have that much of an effect at all.
  Source? To my knowledge Smoot-Hawley is pretty widely regarded as the worst possible move at the worst possible time. Protectionism doesn't work when domestic purchasing power is already collapsing. Agreed on the rest though.
  
  There is some contention about whether this can necessarily be attributed to the tariff. The Great Depression was already in motion before Smoot-Hawley, mainly due to financial instability, falling demand, and poor banking practices. However, the tariff worsened the crisis by shrinking global trade, hurting farmers, and reducing employment in export-dependent industries. Had it not passed, the Depression still would have occurred, but perhaps with less severity.
  Monetarists, such as Milton Friedman, who emphasized the central role of the money supply in causing the depression, considered the Smoot–Hawley Act to be only a minor cause of the Great Depression in the United States.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act
  yeah maybe my nuance leaned too much to the no side, but I wanted to explain tariffs a bit. Trump tariffs are not protectionism or coercion, they're just stupid.
- There is good economic theory that Smoot Hawley actually was responsible for the initial bank failures that led to the Great Depression.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOvWS_xzRbc
  Can skip to about 15 minutes into if ya want.
- This is what is funny for me. I would like tariffs to discourage trade with countries that have less democracy, rights for its citizens, and high income disparity (which unfortunately we are not a paragon of currently) and encourage trade with countries that are the reverse of that.
- Tarriffs can have some useful effects
  Europe has a some tariffs on Chinese EV brands. The reason is that they get subsidized by their government and can easily dump them on our markets, ruining our own industries. The tariff calculation is based on what we think those subsidies are and how to make it fair compared to our prices.
- No one thing triggered it but the tarifs contributed almost as much as the out of control stock market. All the controls put in place to prevent this have been changed. So stupid tarifs(Are there any other kind) and a unregulated market system has us primed for some serious times.
  
  So stupid tarifs(Are there any other kind)
  There are some that work in order to protect national interests, mainly local producers and services. Whether they are stupid or not depends on implementation and end results

A hero of the right, Ronald Reagan, actually gave a speech condemning tariffs. Yup, I'm actually on Reagan's side here.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Mj6N-WBPrVw
- Reagan was a neoconservative, heavily invested in deindustrializing the Midwest to break the domestic labor movement and capturing labor overseas for the benefit of investment capital. He succeeded too well, as his NAFTA and global trade policies birth to large foreign industrial powers that could meet the US as peers instead of supplicants.
  Forty years later, Trump looked at the economic landscape and concluded he could undo the Reagan Era by throwing up high trade barriers, because he believed the finance capitalism at home (combined with our large international military) commanded leverage over physical capital abroad. Now we're gambling on a war over Greenland and a promise that Europe needs Wall Street more than it needs Chinese manufacturing capacity.
  But both Reagan and Trump were fixated on global US hegemony. They just went about it wrong, because they were dumb-dumbs surrounded by people more greedy than they were strategic. It's a double-own goal, from opposite ends of the net.
- I think there's room for reasonable tariff policy, but unfortunately the US is a nuance-free land full of extremists so Trump's terrible implementation will make tariffs radioactive for another generation if there's a large public backlash.
  It doesn't need to be absolutely free trade with slavers or tariff man hell. We could raise the standard of living by allowing free trade but imposing tariffs -- or even outright bans on imports -- from places legalizing slave labor and other close to slave labor conditions. But obviously none of that fits into Trump's dumbass worldview.
  
  Tariffs in my opinion can be a way to protect a given national industry against price dumping, especially when subsidies are involved, or if you have a specific capability in mind that you want to build nationally, but then I think subsidies are a better way, maybe in combination. But putting blanket tariffs against countries is in most cases not the best idea

Second largest senate seat loss, I say hopefully.

If we don't get these paid actors out of Congress we're going to lose in ways most people really don't want to believe

Smoot-Hawley 2: Electric Boogaloo
- Not the second time but some are saying this one is similar to two others including smoot-hawley that triggered a huge economic downturn.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_Abominations
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tariff_laws_in_the_United_States

Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
- It's almost always conservatives caused
- I have a feeling they learned, and then said “what a great idea to crash the economy. It’s so easy, let’s do it.”
  
  hey asshole, trade wars are good, and easy to win!
  i swear to god you can get in line behind our eternally healthy, young, sexy god-king or you can get ooooout
- Orrrrrr. Putin did study history and manipulated the village idiot to intentionally repeat it by telling said idiot it would make him sooper popyoolar (playing on his personality disorder) and also i will throw you out a fucking window if you dont cuz you owe me all your moneez (russian loans).
  
  Let's not forget that the Republicans are an army of sycophants with zero capacity to think or act for themselves. Trump is a narcissistic pawn and absolute loser, but even at the highest level of power he's only a problem because the Republican Party are either spineless cowards or deranged cultists.
- Thats supposed to be cautionary, but to the MAGA Nazis, its a Game Plan.
  
  Yes but only the racist parts. They don't want to repeat the great depression, but are going to because they didn't actually learn about history.

People came for the Smoot but they stayed for the Hawley.

Maybe it is a good idea to get rid of senate seats with new people. 50 years the same people might be a bit too long
- How about making more then 2 political parties viable with no spoiler effect via state level electoral reform?
  
  We need more options and should be similar to europe with 8 or 10. parties can come up and fail.
- I'm good with lengthy term limits, even, but there needs to be something
  
  It's not really a term limit, but here in Norway you're not allowed to work a government job after passing 70.
  This also applies to elected officials, so hey at least we don't have anyone over 70.
  
  I like how we do governor in va. One term then you need to leave. You can come back later but theres no incumbent advantage.

They also didn't have fox news at that time :/
- They had newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, who pretty much invented the "yellow press". And whose story is eerily similar to Musk's, including a sudden swing from progressivism to far right nationalism.
- Even Fox viewers can't hide from their credit card balance. At least I hope that's the case.
- trump won't for much longer....
  
  Being ruled by billionaires works both ways I guess lol one can only hope.

This time when we stomp down the corporatists we need to make it illegal for corporate interests to be considered when making policy.
And collective ownership

Ferris Bueller's Day off was educational!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuOHbyuanbY
- I wish somebody was paying attention
- Voo doo....economics

Sadly their supporters will have to have their homes foreclosed on and eviction notices before they wake up. Farmers will have banks foreclosing on them like in the 1930s.
- And it’s now illegal to be homeless

They did not have computerized voting back then, it was paper ballots mostly. Until then I fully expect the same voting patterns as the last generation to continue; yes, democrats will win more at the mid terms. No, little will change. I fully expect democrats to win solid majorities in both houses in 2026.
Americans, as a group, should look at exit polls and understand them, and use paper ballots as the rule, not the exception. Until then, it’s just an oligarchy. And they don’t have our backs .
But I don’t think it will change any time soon
- You would be correct if the majority of USA states fairly counted the ballots. But if not, there is no reason to prevent a double chamber majority. In fact, it’s necessary then, because it derails paper ballot efforts.
  This is a long game, so to speak. There will still be dem presidents later too.
  What people who decry fascism tend to overlook is that the country has not been a democracy for a while. This is all theater on a grand scale, for decades, and we are the audience

I’ll just leave this here then: https://www.hiddendominion.com/sir-glubbs-250-year-hypothesis-on-the-duration-of-great-nations/

Never saw Ferris Bueler I take it?
- Is that.. What now? Anyone? Voodoo economics?

This is why I suspect the fix is in on our elections. They won't let go of power, even if they have to cheat to keep it. And they know what they are doing will be very unpopular.

If you don't want to read here's a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7i-ievZZiQ&t=22s

Yeah, but back then they still had elections.

Any relation to Jumpin' Josh?

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