Smoot-Hawley “was such a disaster that it’s held sway over American trade policy for over 80 years,” said Joshua Meltzer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who also teaches international trade law at Johns Hopkins University. “No one wants to repeat it.”He called Mr. Trump’s comments on trade wars “a dramatic departure” from economic orthodoxy. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs, Professor Palen said, caused countries like Italy to abandon American imports and resume trading with the Soviets, forging trade links that persist today. The United States retaliated by imposing tariffs on an array of goods, including French brandy, light trucks and Volkswagen buses. In any trade war, as that example suggests, “the big losers are consumers, who are the vast majority of people,” Professor Palen said.

Source: New York Times March 08, 2018 23:00 UTC