Yeah, sorry to say you were pretty off base friend. Smoot-Hawley didn’t start the fire, but it poured fuel all over the flames and locked the firemen out of the building.

Friedman was an advisor to Reagan and Thatcher. He was a libertarian who genuinely believed that economic prosperity hinged almost entirely on just printing more money. His economic theories are all over the place, but even he acknowledges that tariffs generally don’t work:

… [Friedman] uses tariffs as an example of a policy that brings noticeable financial benefits to a visible group, but causes worse harms to a diffuse group of workers and consumers