Schiff on Legitimate Targets: Trump’s Policies Will Trigger Inflation

In a recent appearance on Legitimate Targets, Peter lays out a bleak scenario for the U.S. economy if current trade and fiscal policies continue. He ties rising consumer prices, falling asset values, and geopolitical shifts in global reserves to the political choices being made, and he warns that voters are not getting the honest accounting of what those choices cost.  

He opens by describing the wrenching re-pricing that Trump’s goals require for them to be achieved — and why ordinary Americans will suffer for it:

And we’re starting to see the beginning of that right now because what has to happen to achieve the goals that Trump has? You have to have much higher consumer prices in America, much higher interest rates, and much lower asset prices. So we need stock prices, bond prices, real estate prices to go way down, but the price of everything you buy to go way up. So that’s not what Americans signed up for. But that’s what they’re going to get.

Peter then connects trade conflict to shifts in global reserve management, noting that China is moving away from Treasuries and into other assets — an adjustment that helps Europe and hurts the U.S.:

Now, personally, I think what the Chinese are doing, in addition to buying gold, which they’re doing, I think they’re probably gonna be swapping their Treasuries for German bonds and other European sovereign debt. I think they’re buying euros. That’s why the euro is having one of its best days ever today because I think China’s buying the euro. And that’s gonna be great for the Europeans and lousy for us because we keep saying, hey, China, who are you gonna sell your goods to because of these tariffs? Well, what you can’t afford to buy, Americans, we’ll just sell it to Europeans.

He warns that partisanship is blinding conservative commentators who refuse to face the underlying financial stress, and he compares the current cheerleading to the run-up to 2008:

And I’ve been saying on my own podcast and on X that what’s happening now, what’s been happening reminds me a lot of early 2008 with all the Republicans saying how great everything is, which is what they did in 2008 when George W. Bush was president. And I was arguing with these guys on TV about the financial crisis that was right around the corner and they were laughing at me and saying, I didn’t know what I was talking about. Well, I’m not on those TV shows anymore because they don’t invite me on, but I have my own podcast that I could post and I’ve been saying the same thing. These guys are all wrong. Politics is blinding their vision and they think just because Trump is president, everything must be great. Trump got elected because things aren’t great and now they’re even worse.

Peter also warns that Trump could end up as the scapegoat for structural imbalances built over decades, even as the president promises a new golden age:

The process is just getting started, but the worst part about it is, and I was even talking about this before Trump got elected, right? Even though I supported him. I said the risk is that he becomes the fall guy for the problems that have been building for decades. And the fact that he’s still telling everybody how great it’s gonna be and how it’s gonna boom and how it’s a golden age in America. And when we are in the worst recession that anybody alive today can remember. And not only that, but the worst inflation. More so than anyone can remember.

Finally, Peter stresses that he sees himself as one of the few who will name the problem clearly amid partisan misinformation, and he says he uses his platforms to push an objective assessment:

I’m constantly posting now to put out the truth because there’s so much misinformation in the mainstream media on both sides from the left and the right. You know, you can’t even get the truth now on Fox News. You know, you have a group of people that think Trump could do no wrong and you have a group of people that think Trump can’t do anything right. Like nobody is objective when it comes to the policies right now. Whereas I am, I call the balls and the strikes the way they are.