The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act imposed tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods. Some economists, though controversially, believe it significantly contributed to the onset of the Great Depression. A few days earlier, over a thousand economists signed a letter to President Hoover urging him to veto it. The truth is, according to Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT, that complete autarky would indeed make large countries like the United States poorer, but not much poorer, thanks to the large size of the economy, while also gaining stability.
