Of the following, the most important cause of the Great Depression was soaring energy costs soaring energy costs: A. serious dislocation in international trade serious dislocation in international trade
B. European abandonment of the gold standard European abandonment of the gold standard
C. confiscatory social security taxes confiscatory social security taxes
D. excessive government spending

The correct answer is the option A: Serious dislocation in international trade.

Explanation:

To begin with, the Great Depression is the famous name that receives the financial crisis that started in the United States with the breakdown of the New York's stock exchange market and that quickly spread throught out the whole world ended up shooking the entire global economy for about a complete decade.

The major causes of it where a couple of various things and situation that finally tended to the explosion of the stock market. The context was that the United States after winning the First War became the most powerful nation in the world and with that also the country with more gold reserves so it obligate the european nations to pay the debts of the war as well as difficult them to trade in the international market by elevating the taxes to their imports and pushing its own exports to every other country. So thats basically how the whole international trade suffered from a dislocation.