Why did the United States abandon the gold standard in the 1930s? The government wanted to rapidly expand the money supply in response to the Great Depression. The Treasury Department in the United States found it was cheaper to print paper money instead of gold coins. The government wanted to move away from a floating exchange rate system to a fixed exchange rate system. New sources of gold were discovered, so the price of gold plummeted, dramatically reducing the value of the dollar.

In the 1930s, the United States abandoned the gold standard because the government wanted to rapidly expand the money supply in response to the Great Depression.

Explanation:

The Gold Standard monetary system was abandoned during the years after the Great Depression of 1929 to prevent prices and wages from falling in response to a general reduction in global demand, so that adjustments fell on the total amount of employment. Under these conditions, the depreciation of the exchange rate (that is, the abandonment of the pure gold standard) was considered "less painful" (in order to reduce exports). This prevented the reduction of wages, especially since the pressure of the unions imposed this kind of policy in some way. And all this in addition without taking into account that all countries, sooner or later, would adopt the same policy, resort to devaluation, with which the destruction of employment for years was inevitable.