Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

So we have had those import bans in place here in the United States for years.

Under the Obama administration, there was a closing of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which, get this, Back in the 30s, when we were doing our own, like, you know, nationalism and having our own experiment with trade and tariff and how we can, you know, protect U.S. interests, we pushed here in the United States the Smooth Holy Tariff Act, but we left a provision in there that said you cannot import goods made with forced labor unless you cannot create them domestically.

Crazy, crazy loophole.

But basically, he was saying, yeah, we know it's crazy out there, we don't want that happening here, but if we can't make it here, then we're going to import it.

And then he even invoked this clause of law that's also really dubious to outright ban the importation of a few products.

And that clause of law, it's the infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 that he's trying to resuscitate.

So he lost on all the other statutes he tried to use.

He says, go back to Smoot-Hawley, and let's try to use that to go after Canada.

Yes.

Yes.

And Smoot-Hawley, you know, Smoot-Hawley was so devastating.

It is the legislation that made anti-terrorist philosophy bipartisan.

Which brings us to the ultimate cautionary tale, the economic nightmare of 1930, the Great Depression hits.

And despite frantic warnings from economists across the spectrum, the United States passes the Smoot-Hawley terror fact.

Yeah, in a blind panic, they just wall themselves off with massive taxes on imports.

And it triggered a terrifying domino effect.

There's a lot of forced and essentially slave labor in China, and not just Uyghurs.

We've got the Tariff Act of 1930, which bars the importation of goods made with forced labor into the United States.

We're somewhat enforcing it, but there's a lot more that we must be doing because it's not just the genocidal program against Uyghurs.

I mean, it's forced labor across China and no administration has enforced it.

So we've got two bites at the apple, one at the money and the other at policy.

And I think a newly refurbished Democratic Party, seeing what's happened, the corruption that's gone on in the last two years, the loose spending that goes on, the way we have created, for example, tariffs, under Smoot-Hawley, which is something from the late 20s, that you could have a president creating terrorists with an emergency.

Well, we haven't had any emergency.

All of those things are going to be looked at.