Comparisons between aspects of the current crisis and mistakes of the Great Depression have come and gone in recent months. Fiscal policy has relied heavily on the thinking of economist John Maynard Keynes and industrialist Andrew Mellon, while monetary policy has drawn heavily on the analysis by Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz in their 1963 book, A Monetary History of the United States. But those who have loomed largest in the debate about the world economy are Representative Willis C. Hawley and Senator Reed Smoot.

These two US lawmakers were congressional sponsors of a totem of protectionism – the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. This act sought to force Americans to use up slack capacity in the domestic economy by raising the price of imports. Rather predictably, this both exacerbated the US depression and sent the world into a protectionist spiral. Other countries retaliated with border barriers of their own and the economic climate worsened.