Hoover vetoed Smoot-Hawley. It was overridden by Congress pretty strongly, including a majority of Democrats. Unless you drastically change the make up of Congress and get them to ignore the immense polical pressure for protectionism, Smoot-Hawley is pretty much unavoidable.Of course it's avoidable. Go back far enough and anything is.
The 1929 crash in particular doesn't require a PoD too far back. Have a free-trade Democrat elected to the presidency instead of Hoover, forestalling any chance of Smoot-Hawley or similar protectionist turns. 1929 is a year remembered for a mild recession like the ones in '24 or '27, rather than the beginning of the greatest depression ever.
That was the catalyst. The real economy itself was going into trouble in this period, and part of what masked this was the stock market bubble. Either you have a recession/depression earlier, or you have a stock market bubble and crash.I thought the Depression was partly caused by speculation in the stock market, and how a bunch of people were buying stocks on credit, so when the speculators pulled out, they were all wiped out. Thus, they no longer had disposable incomes. So yes, it is avoidable.