Though lacking Karl Marx's sense of the dramatic (not to mention the metaphysical), your correspondent is nonetheless concerned that Mexico has retaliated to the US' protectionism by imposing tariffs.

The specter of Smoot-Hawley is not truly rising; at least, not yet. When Senator Reed Smoot (R - UT) and Representative Willis Hawley (R - OR) proposed raising tariffs on some twenty thousand goods in 1930, all of America's largest trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own. This was hostile game theory at its worst. Credited for choking off nearly two-thirds of America's exports, the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act became one of the many mistakes that pushed America into the Great Depression.

Mexico's response is minor in comparison . In brief, Congress reacted to pressure from America's trucking industry to protect American truckers from Mexican competition by disallowing Mexican access to US roads, effectively hurting Mexican truckers. In retaliation, Mexico has raised tariffs on American exports to Mexico amounting to $2.4b dollars. This loss, in accordance with the way GDP is calculated, amounts to $2.4b subtracted from GDP.

Leaving out, for the moment, the short-term effect protectionist escalation within and without NAFTA on America's economy, America must consider how its actions will affect the world. American protectionism would increase the likelihood of protectionism around the world. I am most concerned with protectionism within the EU ; your correspondent has made every effort to laud the EU for its pioneering of soft diplomacy on Free Exchange. Protectionism within the EU would herald the end of the European project; the damage of protectionism would spill over from economics into international relations.

The abstracts of interdisciplinary ruin aside, the American economy cannot afford to conjure up the ghost of Smoot-Hawley. Economically, a two-thirds reduction in exports would cripple the economy; a two-thirds reduction in import would then cripple the economies of others'. A break-up of the EU due to economic protectionism would cripple credit markets along with the death of the Euro as a viable currency; politically, America would have to deal with some twenty odd nations instead of one finance minister.

Expect, then, a G20 meeting this week dominated by vigorous opposition to protectionism by EU members. David Brooks once described Obama's administration as a valedictocracy -- rule by the valedictorians (joking that "If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed."); I believe and trust that the Obama Administration will exorcise the specter of Smoot-Hawley in the wake of the Mexican response and the G20 meeting.

The specter of Smoot-Hawley will likely remain just that: a specter. Both vocally at the G20 meeting and reaffirming his declarations with swift action, Mr Obama must refrain from exhuming the corpse.