Half of the Great Depression was caused by tariffs.
The downvotes might be because it's unrelated to the discussion, but it's also not really wrong. The exact impact of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act probably can't be quantified, but it's well agreed that it contributed significantly to the extent of the depression itself due to the retaliatory tariffs triggered and the resulting drop in global trade. (Institutional access needed - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-...)
The paper you have linked is a survey (economic historians are like other people and believe things that do not have clear evidence too, as someone who studied economic history I can give you a long list of subjects on which opinions without evidence are common...this is one of the most notorious), it does not say that it contributed half (there is no way to know this either, it is an anti-factual statement, there is research that says it contributed to the drop in imports...but this is against the backdrop of a massive drop that was probably at least 5-10x as large caused by banking), the quantum is extremely important here because you can say something is probably negative but also probably irrelevant (true in this case, the reason why this statement is said is because tariffs are negative ceterius paribus, so it is easy to say that they were negative but this ignores all other context...the irrationality about tariffs is exposed by almost all of the growth miracles in economic history occurring in countries with extremely high tariffs), and (finally) there is massive amounts of evidence that 99% of the cause was banking.
On the latter, this is knowable because you can point to failures of specific banks that coincided with the Depression getting worse in areas where those banks traded (in particular, the failure of Caldwell). This is a very different kind of evidence to the one for tariffs, in economic history terms the latter is shrug maybe (this kind of thing is not apparent to people who don't know how the sausage is made). This is why you have papers (like Eichengreen) that revolve around asking why SH is such an obsession for economists (usually not actual economic historians). Compare this to the number of papers on banking history of the period, on the failures of massive banks like Caldwell...there are very few on this because banking history is extremely unpopular and boring amongst economists because you can't use mathematical models that show how clever you are, macro is very popular but completely useless (again, most people don't know how the sausage is made).
There is no evidence that it contributed significantly. This is like your house being on fire, and saying that your house collapsed because you left the kitchen door open (and, again, to repeat: there is no evidence that tariffs are bad either...because almost every country that has experienced huge growth had tariffs in the past, there is a lot of evidence that tariffs/trade barriers are bad for economically uncompetitive countries i.e. the EU today, South America in the 50/60s, and Britain 20-70s but those two things are not separable, tariffs have a context).
Other comments are also mostly wrong. Issue wasn't unregulated banks in the GD either, most banks that failed were regulated. There is an argument for saying that state regulators were worse, that there was massive regulatory fragmentation (in the 20s, banks were regulated in a completely different way to today) but I am not clear why people would assume regulation automatically leads to less crises. Savings and Loans were also heavily regulated...still blew up. The issue is that heavy regulation usually causes massive concentration in the banking sectors (Canada and Australia are two examples) and this generally leads to a much lower frequency of banking crises but significantly greater severity. The assumption that regulators can just magically find this optimum is not logical (and is based on the theory that people who work at banks do not have an incentive to stop failures, this aspect was sold heavily after 2008 to support significantly more regulation...but it isn't accurate, for example Lehman's senior management lost 95% of their net worth, and ignores that regulators were overseeing the institutions that failed before too).
See Rustici (2005),Irwin (1998), Bond (1993) and Crucini (1996)
Anyway,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2646642
I'm not as engaged in this topic as you are, likely because I'm not as ideologically fixated on it. But the idea that the Tariff Act had a significant negative impact is well analyzed (e.g above), hence the consensus.
Wish you the best.
Imports fell 40% and it is a small part of that fall. And, as the paper explains, the actual economic impact was quite limited in the context of the Great Depression and the financial system shutting down completely.
The reason why I am engaged is because I have a postgrad in economic history. Within economic history, SH is generally understood as something where the evidence is often misunderstood by journalists (for the reasons I have explained), and this filters down (the Irwin paper is somewhat notorious for this because Irwin is a trade economist who is often very careful, because trade economics is often non-conclusive, and you hear the conclusion from people who have never read or actually understood the paper...you may not have noticed but I alluded to this paper in my original argument, it is that well-known that people will misunderstand it).
The paper you have linked is usually cited as evidence for SH having a limited effect - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=269524 is one among many examples.
The issue is that people who haven't studied GD in depth do not understand any part of the context. They just do a quick Google search and then act as if this is the same thing as prolonged study.
>was a huge contributor to the great depression.
... the great depression happened under a central bank system, within 15 or 20 years of this industry becoming far more regulated.
As a simple entry into the evidence start with https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/recent-trends-central-bank-in..., and follow up via google scholar.
Then I recommend you learn some economics and how to look at past evidence.
First, it's not taxing people - pretty much zero people hold all their money in cash. Without targeted low inflation, countries run the risk of a deflationary spiral, which means massive unemployment and wealth destruction. At no point did a person pay them a tax. And any govt debt they buy is exactly the result of elected officials spending more than they take in. Don't want the Fed buying govt debt - tell your politicians to raise taxes to pay for what they use, or to cut (and note - the current DOGE idiocy looks at best to cut a fraction of a percent of the budget, while the GOP looks, once again, to add trillions to the debt under the never-once-worked belief that somehow tax cuts will pay for themselves... That is sheer idiocy of the highest form: not a single time has that done it, yet they and their ignorant followers try and try and try.... - this is where your debt comes from).
Assets other than cash inflate along with inflation, which is where most people hold assets (houses, stocks, pension funds, pretty much everything). Inflation also lowers payments for fixed loans, like mortgages, so inflation generally gives value to borrowers (they have less effective to pay back over time) at the cost to lenders. So most people at some point have a longer term loan (house, education), and inflation adds to their wealth by making them owe less.
So your argument is both ignorant and doesn't understand basic econ or reality. It's this ignorant, self-righteous and frankly incredibly stupid view nearly unique to Americans that is right now destroying trillions in wealth for Americans through equivalently stupid, ignorant, and short sighted policy. So congrats - you are the problem for America. I do not understand how the US went from an economic powerhouse with decent policy and an educated populace to support itself to the current idiot cycle of discredited ideas and such ignorant masses thinking they understand topics they clearly do not. Good luck tanking your economy. It looks like your health system is going along with it.
[0] “Do We Need Central Banks?” by Milton Friedman In Monetary Management in Hong Kong, Proceedings of the Seminar on Monetary Management organized by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority on 18-19 October 1993, pp. 44-47
[1] Free to Choose lecture films series
And nothing he said that you “paraphrased” supports your claims. Heck, the word “tax” never even appears in his essay.
If you’re going to appeal to authority, I recommend you at least look over the list of Econ Nobels after Friedman - there’s plenty after him actually on topic or much closer than his field of expertise. You may want to learn from them.
>tax
The also cited lectures explain why he believed it was an invisible tax. Milton friedman beleived inflation was an invisible tax. Then he characterised our central bank as a source of inflation. We could dig up additional sources, but I think you know this if you know so much of nobel laureates in economists, it would merely be a make work exercise you would promptly discard. Deliberately feigning ignorance doesn't mean I haven't paraphrased him correctly, although really he is one of many I paraphrase because many economists have held this view.
> (and note his 1976 Nobel was not on central banking).
Both Friedmans and Bernankes nobel prize brief mention research that includes the central bank. Friedman's nobel brief specifically called out research on the federal reserve during the great depression in A Monetary History of the United States. But neither prize narrowed central banks as the center focus of the prize.