1930s Dust Bowl

One of the most infamous ecological disasters in U.S. history, the Dust Bowl was a decade-long period of severe dust storms that devastated wide swaths of the Great Plains during much of the 1930s.  

Widespread drought conditions and over-farming led to crop failure and mass migrations until rainfall finally returned in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

The resulting economic hardships were compounded by the Great Depression. According to one report from the Works Progress Administration, 21 percent of all rural Great Plains families were receiving federal emergency relief by 1936; by 1940, 2.5 million people had left the region entirely. The period also spawned some of the country’s most iconic literary and artistic works, including Dorothea Lang’s famous photo “Migrant Mother,” and John Steinbeck’s novels “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men.”

Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 & the Great Depression

The Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was an act signed into law on June 17, 1930, that raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. The ensuing retaliatory tariffs by U.S. trading partners reduced American exports and imports by more than half and according to some views may have contributed to the severity of the Great Depression.

The stock market topped in 1929 and fell 45 percent in just three months. Then, it had a sharp correction, recovering 47 percent from the November ‘29 low.

In June 1930, two U.S. Congressmen, Smoot and Hawley, championed a bill to slap a tariff on virtually every foreign good. And that was the catalyst for the second leg down ... a massive plunge in the stock market and arguably the catalyst for the Great Depression.

The problem with tariffs is that they tend to bring about retaliation. And that's exactly what happened. It brought global trade to a standstill.