President Hoover did not respond very well to The Great Depression. His ideology was that Americans could recover on their own, and that this depression was just a minor economic decline. He clearly did not see that this was a complete economic derailment.
He proceeded to increase taxes on imports and urge businesses not to lay off their workforce, despite the fact that they had no money to pay their wages. He followed the Republican idea of Laissez-Faire (gov't hands-off economy), which at the time was a terrible idea. Furthermore, he refused to give federal economic aid to those who were struggling. He attempted to aid business through the RFC (Reconstruction Finance Corporation), but it never reached its full potential.
To sum it all up, in the course of Hoover's presidency, he did not do anything beneficial for the nation to get it out of the Depression.