exported and legislature in the 1920's created huge tariffs on products that European nations could sell back to the US. These tariffs created an imbalance of trade and the European nations got poorer, and poorer. The American history book briefly summarizes the effects of tariffs on the United States, "A drying up of international trade, moreover, had been hastened by the shortsighted Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930." (Kennedy, 787) They needed more United States money to buy more United States products and thus the trade turned into a malicious cycle, with no help from the government.
             The government was an immense cause of the Great Depression. The government at the time had a laissez-faire policy in which it left businesses to deal without government interference. Bergen Encyclopedia briefly summarizes this belief that the
             ...