[1] Smoot is primarily remembered as the co-sponsor of the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, which increased almost 900 American import duties.

Criticized at the time as having "intensified nationalism all over the world" by Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan & Co.,[2] Smoot–Hawley is widely regarded as one of the catalysts for the worsening Great Depression.

[3] Smoot was a prominent leader of the LDS Church, called to serve as an apostle and member of the Quorum of the Twelve in 1900.

[5]: 99–102  The family moved to Provo, Utah, when Abraham Smoot was called by Brigham Young as the stake president.

[1] Thereafter, Smoot became a successful businessman in the Provo and Salt Lake City areas, with interests including dry goods stores, mining, banking, railroads, lumberyards, raising livestock, coal sales, and manufacturing woolens.

[12] After becoming an apostle in 1900, Smoot received the approval of LDS Church president Joseph F. Smith to run for office.

Only a few years earlier, another prominent Utah Latter-day Saint, B. H. Roberts, had been elected to the House of Representatives.

He was denied his seat on the basis that he practiced plural marriage (polygamy), which was illegal in Utah as well as all other states of the Union.

[13]: 13–20 The LDS Church had officially renounced future plural marriages in an 1890 Manifesto, before Utah was admitted as a state.

However, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that church leaders continued to approve secretly of new, post-Manifesto plural marriages.

Although Smoot was not a polygamist, the charge by those opposed to his election to the Senate was that he could not swear to uphold the United States Constitution while serving in the highest echelons of an organization that sanctioned law breaking.

Some opponents claimed that temple-attending Latter-day Saints took an "oath of vengeance" against the United States for past grievances.

[1] In 1916, William Kent was the lead sponsor in the House of Representatives of legislation to establish the National Park Service.

He retired from active business and political pursuits to dedicate his remaining years as an apostle for the LDS Church.