The Engine Of Prosperity: No Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

The basic premise here is that Herbert Hoover gives in to his own instincts (and pleas from the likes of Henry Ford and many others) and doesn't sign the bill into law.

Aside from getting some farmers mad at him (they supported tariffs on agricultural goods), what effect would not signing the tariff have had on the Great Depression? Would prosperity have returned by mid-decade based on greater trade?
 
Impossible to guess, if other countries had followed the US lead and not imposed similar tariffs then the World economy would not have plunged as much as it did and pulled out of recession much sooner.
However sadly there was movements to impose raise tariffs in all the significant countries. In all probability either France or Britain would have introduced higher tariffs and the bill, or something similar would have been resubmitted and past. In that case the only effect would be to delay the onset of the Great Depression.
 
Aside from getting some farmers mad at him (they supported tariffs on agricultural goods), what effect would not signing the tariff have had on the Great Depression? Would prosperity have returned by mid-decade based on greater trade?
Well, it might have. Presuming it does weaken the collapse into semi-autarky that much of the world suffered - a not entirely unlikely scenario, since not all heightened tariffs are equally heightened - then it would have decreased the fall in prosperity; in other words, the Great Depression would be slightly less bad. That would mean prosperity would return faster, what with there being less prosperity to return, yes, although even if we presume that the world is less autarkic than OTL, it depends on how much less it is, and how other things goes (for instance, one could have made an argument that the aftermath of that attempted Zollverein between Austria and Germany in 1931 helped make things worse in Europe, and whether that'd still go the same here [it might not be negotiated, France might not try to stop it in the same way, France might not try to stop it, etc] is a tricky question).
 
Tariffs were the go to tool for economic interventionism prior to the advent of Keynesian Economics. Without the Smoot-Hawley Tariff I'd wager that Congress is going to try and continue to get something along the same lines (perhaps a little less extensive/harsh) past Hoover, especially when other countries start putting up tariffs of their own (No Smoot-Hawley isn't going to change prevailing currents of thought elsewhere IMO).

But for the sake of the scenario, let's say that Hoover exercises his veto and keeps Congress from putting in place any tariffs. Obviously it's going to come up in the next election as a major issue. I could see Hoover not opting to run in 1932 and someone like Charles Curtis winning the nomination promising to "blast his way into world markets with tariffs".
 
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