Statistics show that currently in the United States the unemployment rate is high. Many people say that this is bad and that the economy is slowly going into decline, but most people forget to think that these things are normal and are nothing worse than the Depression of the 1930s. Although some people claim that the Depression was caused by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, this was strictly due to many reasons unrelated to the law. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930. It had been proposed in 1929 and was passed in June 1930 by Congress (Burg 63). Two men named Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley, who were Republicans, sponsored this law, but 46 states didn't see its significance or how it would help the Depression, so they wrote letters to Hoover asking him to veto the law (Burg 64). The importance of the law was to add taxes on imported goods to increase the amount of products manufactured in the United States and boost the economy (Stein). Although exports may have been slightly affected by retaliatory tariffs from other countries, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 clearly did not affect the condition of the United States during the Depression due to already low exports, low quantities of imports, and increased of the unemployment rate. The first reason the law did not affect conditions during the Depression is the already low exports. Different countries had different economies. Some of them were not good, and for certain reasons, countries stopped trading with the United States. These include some of the country's largest trading partners such as Britain and Canada. Both of these counties had struggling economies; part of this is due to the United States g...... middle of paper ......a certain event or thing that caused it (Stein). So the next time a depression occurs or the economy does poorly, don't try to pick out a certain thing that caused it, but look at the whole picture. Works Cited Burg, David F. The Great Depression. Updated edition. New York: Facts on File, 2005. Print. pg 63-64"The Depression of the 1930s." BBC News. BBC and Web. 01 November 2013."Did the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act cause the Great Depression of the 1930s?" JobsbackWorksBackcom. Back Work, 2013. Web. October 26, 2013. Irwin, Douglas. "What Caused the Recession of 1937-1938?" Vox. Vox, 11 September 2011. Web. 01 Nov. 2013. Numbers. "Statistics of the Great Depression." Shmoop. Shmoop and Web. October 26, 2013.O'Brien, Anthony. “Smoot-Hawley Tariff”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. August 14, 2001. Web. October 25, 2013."Recession." Investipedia. Investopedia and Web. 01 November. 2013.