Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression

"A vivid, anecdotal, judicious telling of timeless story: what happens when cocksure politicians fall into the grip of a really bad economic idea."—Financial Times

An authoritative history of the disastrous U.S. tariffs that worsened the Great Depression around the world

The Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, which raised U.S. duties on hundreds of imported goods to record levels, is America's most infamous trade law. It is often associated with—and sometimes blamed for—the onset of the Great Depre...