With a trade deal with Japan and a strong U.S. economy, where is the trade depression the Smoot-Hawley alarmists predicted?
http://dailytorch.com/2019/10/with-a-trade-deal-with-japan-and-a-strong-u-s-economy-where-is-the-trade-depression-the-smoot-hawley-alarmists-predicted/
In the 2016 election pundits were tripping over themselves to predict that if President Donald Trump won and implemented his planned trade agenda, which included tariffs, why, we’d have a global recession perhaps even as bad as the Great Depression. Well, Trump went through with the tariffs on China, so where’s the trade depression some were warning about? 2018 as it turns out had the strongest economic growth since 2005 at 2.9 percent. Unemployment is now at a 50-year low at 3.5 percent, whereas in the Great Depression it hit a high of more than 25 percent. And now with the first step of a free trade deal with Japan finalized with reciprocal tariff reductions on agriculture and digital trade — plus other deals with South Korea, Mexico and Canada — bold predictions of an all-out trade war with the rest of the world have proven to be greatly exaggerated. Even on China, where trade talks continue, Trump has shown a willingness to negotiate for reciprocal tariff and non-tariff reductions that his critics alleged the President was incapable of. Were the doubters just wrong about everything?
