Thomas Sowell commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.

Many factors, of course, affected the Great Depression of the 1930s. But later economists have seen the Hawley-Smoot tariff as one factor needlessly prolonging the economic disaster.

How much wiser are we today? Not much, if at all.

Talk about import restrictions or complaints about "outsourcing" today proceed with the same mindless disregard of what other nations are doing and will do.

People who throw around statistics about how many American jobs have been outsourced don't even mention how many Americans have jobs that have been outsourced from other countries, much less how many Americans will lose those jobs if we start a new round of international trade restrictions.

Well, let us start mentioning. And mentioning. And mentioning.