 The Smoot-Holly Tariff Act was a law that implemented protectionist trade policies in the United States. Sponsored by Senator Reid Smoot and Representative Willis C. Holly, it was signed by President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930. The act raised U.S. tariffs in over 20,000 imported goods. Arguably, this law was created to help protect American businesses and farmers from economic turmoil. The stock market had just crashed, and the world was taking its first steps in what would become known as the Great Depression. Instead of insulating the United States, the Smoot-Holly Tariff Act triggered retaliatory tariffs and eventually kicked the country off a cliff along with the rest of the world cementing a worldwide depression. With any major action, there is always a risk of unintended consequences. In debate, this empirical reality is the foundation of the negative team's offense. In negating a resolution, there are two main methods you can use to oppose the affirmative's net benefits, direct refutation and disadvantages. Today we will talk to you about how to run the latter. We will first talk a bit about how disadvantages work before taking a look at the four components necessary to structure the perfect disadvantage. The disadvantage is an off-case argument used by the negative team. The purpose of the disadvantage is to prove a net detriment of the plan. Most disadvantages follow a linear model where the negative asserts that the action of the affirmative's plan will negatively impact something that is working in the status quo. It is also possible for the negative teams to argue that a problem in the status quo would be exacerbated to a brink point if the plan was passed. Disadvantages are a useful method for the negative team to engage in the debate. In debates about policy topics, it's possible for a negative team to win making only defensive refutation. Strategically, however, it makes more sense for the negative team to split their constructive speech time making both defensive and offensive refutation. Additionally, since disadvantages are constructed during preparation time, it is significantly easier to incorporate useful facts and statistics into your arguments. Now that you have an idea what disadvantages are, let's talk about how to run them. Let's start with the uniqueness. This is simply a description of the status quo as it pertains to the content of the disadvantage. Your goal here is to identify something in the status quo that could be described as good, stable, or improving. Later in the disadvantage, you will argue that the plan worsens this occurrence. But for now, you simply want to identify it and to support its current status. Try to avoid instances that are already bad and worsening. The best DA arguments come from examples of things that are currently working. The exception would be instances where a problem exists in the status quo and you want to claim that the plan would significantly accelerate the harms to a terminal point. In this instance, you would argue at the uniqueness level that we are near the brink but have not managed to drop over the proverbial edge. Like in an advantage construction, the disadvantage uniqueness needs to be supported. Try to include at least one piece of critical empirical evidence that supports your claims. The second part of the disadvantage is the link argument. Links of disadvantages can and should be simple. Strategically, it makes the most sense to look at the action that the affirmative fiated in their plan text and identify the part of it you want to argue negatively affects the status quo. By keeping the link focused on what was fiated in the round, you avoid accusations by the affirmative team that their plan does not cause this to happen. For the disadvantage to have relevance in the round, the negative team must show that the affirmative causes the disadvantage that is claimed. The third part of the disadvantage is the internal link. The goal of the internal link argument is to connect the link to the impact or show the steps that the link causes to get to the impact. You typically want to have at least one internal link argument, however it is possible to have several. There is a trade-off that takes place with increasing the number of internal links. Beneficially, adding additional internal link arguments allows you to build towards a larger and perhaps more detrimental impact scenario. On the other hand, the more arguments you make, the more of your speech time you use, and it also increases the places that the affirmative may choose to attack the logic of your disadvantage. Remember, the disadvantage is a linear argument. Losing even one internal link argument takes away the ability for you to win the impact arguments. Impacts are the final element of a complete disadvantage. Usually the impacts are claimed to be so severe that the negative team argues that the disadvantage impacts outweigh the affirmative's impacts from the 1AC. The impacts form the main net detriment, and thus the reason we ought not to adopt the affirmative's plan. Something is or is not happening now. The plan stops or causes that something to happen. By causing that thing to happen or stop happening, the plan causes other results to happen, creating big time and widespread devastation or harm. Do your best to expand on your impacts, explaining their scope, size, and scale will help you use them to outweigh the impacts of your opponent. If possible, try to support your impact scenarios with expert testimony. Today we talked about disadvantages. We discussed their general purpose and how to run them. In retrospect, the Smooth Holly Tariff Act was a major error that significantly exacerbated the economic turmoil during the Great Depression. However, when enacted, it was a plan to try to help. Thinking about the unintended consequences of policy actions is an important part in avoiding them. Thanks for watching everyone. This video series is written and produced by me, Ryan Guy, with the help of a wide variety of scholarly research and open educational resources. For more information on the references and materials used, see the description page on YouTube. This video is published under a Creative Commons license. Please feel free to share, use, and remix its content.