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most people what led to the Great Depression, and they are
likely to point to the 1929 stock market crash as the cause. Put
that same question to historians and economists, and their
response will be far different. They will explain that the
higher U.S. tariffs imposed by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act were
the real culprit. Despite an almost unanimous plea by the
American economist community not to do it, President Herbert
Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law in 1930 as the global
economy weakened following the 1929 crash. The higher tariffs,
essentially extra taxes imposed on imported goods and services,
were intended to protect U.S. jobs and goods against foreign
competition. Instead, they provoked economic retaliation by our
global trading partners, which in turn precipitated a decade-
long economic slump worldwide that did not really end until the
onset of World War II. The Development Research Group at the
World Bank recently studied national t