FILE – Thousands of unemployed people gather outside City Hall in Cleveland during the Great Depression, after some 2,000 jobs were made available for park improvements and repairs, Oct. 9, 1930. (AP Photo, File) WASHINGTON – In the early days of the Great Depression, Rep. Willis Hawley, a Republican from Oregon, and Utah Republican Sen. Reed Smoot thought they had landed on a way to protect American farmers and manufacturers from foreign competition: tariffs. President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, even as many economists warned that the levies would prompt retaliatory tariffs from other countries, which…