[central_va]

But the impact of trade was miniscule when compared to the size of the overall economic contraction. Government expenditures remained essentially constant, but private consumption and investment plummeted. Of the $131 billion in lost economic output over the five-year period, only about $0.7 billion seems attributable to trade. This is shown as the last entry in the last row of the table. In either absolute or relative terms, the trade portion of the economic contraction of the Great Depression appears to be of little import.

Read more: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression

[Regulator]

And none other then Benny Bernanke insists that Smoot-Hawley was a minor problem, and that the real problem was Federal Reserve mismanagement of the money supply in the aftermath of the stock market price collapse.

As he said to the Reserve bankers, We caused it.

Thus his label of Helicopter Ben because he planned to do quite the opposite should he be confronted with such an event.

Which of course he did, and the result is $20 trillion of debt. But that’s another discussion....