No Smoot-Hawley Tariff

I think that, whatever your views, you can agree that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was generally a bad idea. American foreign trade dropped by 50% and unemployment went from 6% to 17% in the year that followed it. It pretty much took a bad situation, and made it worse, at the worst possible moment. Interestingly, what Hoover asked Congress for was a reduction in tariffs, not an increase.

So, lets say that Hoover doesn't sign the bill and it dies when it goes back to Congress. Or, another possibility, is that the bill actually does what Hoover wanted: lower tariffs. According to wikipedia, some have theorized that the stock market crashed was directly due to people worried abou the tariff. I don't know.

So, we have a likely weaker Great Depression.
- Does Hitler still come to power?
- Does Roosevelt still get elected?
- etc? :cool:
 
You don't have the devestation of the economy of OTL due to the fact that international trade doesn't goes into the dustbin that happened in OTL.
 
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Markus

Banned
Okay, but why is this the case?

With the Smoot-Hawley Tariff the USA shut the doors for imports, other nations did the same and more than 90% of the international trade was ... suddenly gone. The economic crisis went from bad to a lot worse, unemployment exploded in Germany and since economic and political instability go hand in hand ... The rest is history as they say.
 
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