The Real Causes of the Depression

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Recommended: International trade and its effects

Statistics show right now in the United States the unemployment rate is high. A lot of people are saying that this is bad and the economy is slowly going downhill, but most people forget to think that these things are normal and is nothing worse than the Depression of the 1930s. Although some people say that the Depression was caused by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, it was strictly due to many reasons that were unrelated to the Act. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was signed by President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930. It had been proposed in 1929 and was passed in June of 1930 by Congress (Burg 63). Two men by the name Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley, who were republicans, sponsored this Act, but 46 states did not see the significance or how it could help the Depression so they wrote letters to Hoover asking him to veto the Act (Burg 64). The importance of the Act was to add taxes on imported goods to increase the amount of United States made products, and boost the economy (Stein). Although exports may have been slightly affected by the retaliatory tariffs of other countries, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 clearly did not affect the condition of the United States during the Depression because of the already low exports, the low import amounts, and the increasing unemployment rate.
The first reason that the Act did not affect the conditions during the Depression is the already low exports. Different countries had differing economies. Some of them were not good, and because of their certain reasons countries stopped trading with the United States. These include some of the country’s biggest trading partners such as Great Britain and Canada. Both of these counties had struggling economies; some of this due to the United States g...

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...t a certain event or thing that caused it (Stein). So next time there in a depression or the economy is bad do not try to pick a certain thing that caused it, but look at the whole picture.

Works Cited

Burg, David F. The Great Depression. Updated ed. New York: Facts On File, 2005. Print. pg 63-64
"The Depression of the 1930s." BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.
"Did the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act Cause the Great Depression of the 1930′s?" Jobs Back
JobsBackcom. Jobs Back, 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.
Irwin, Douglas. "What Caused the Recession of 1937-38?" Vox. Vox, 11 Sept. 2011. Web. 01 Nov.
2013.

Numbers. "The Great Depression Statistics." Shmoop. Shmoop, n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.
O’Brien, Anthony. “Smoot-Hawley Tariff”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. August
14, 2001. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
"Recession." Investopedia. Investopedia, n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

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