Fed’s Stagflation Fears Rise as Tariff War Escalates (Uncut) 04-13-2025

Fed’s Stagflation Fears Rise as Tariff War Escalates

We’ve been throwing around this word, stagflation, this term, not every viewer is familiar with it. Let’s just, I guess, define our terms here, what we’re looking for in the way of stagflation. This is going up means people are less likely to buy things.

It’s a recipe for stagflation if it persists. So you’re talking about stagflation. That’s our concern.

The dreaded S word is back. Stagflation. When rising prices meet a slowing economy, a nightmare so unlikely that most economists thought it was impossible until it finally happened.

A scenario so hard to solve that last time it took 10 years, 20% interest rates, and millions of jobs lost before they were able to break it. But now it’s not just some scary economic term. It could be your new economic reality.

You’re already paying more for your food, gas, bills. But what would happen if inflation doubled, tripled, or quadrupled? Not only would it impact you and the prices you have to pay, but demand for goods across the board would drop. At a time when the economy is already slowing down with delinquencies rising, companies failing, and unemployment quietly ticking up.

If demand were to slow, growth would meaning a tighter labor market and people just like you being caught between rising prices and falling opportunities exactly the way that people suffered during the 1970s. Except this time, it’s even worse. A more interconnected, fragile system sitting on top of mountains of debt with no way out.

So why is stagflation back in the conversation right now? Just how bad could it get? How will it impact your savings and your financial future? And most importantly, how can you use this information to protect yourself before it’s too late? Let’s get into it. To really understand stagflation and how it would impact you, we need to first go back to when it hit hard, the 1970s. But do not skip this foundational part as it is key to understanding how today is both very much the same and very different.

It’s hard to overstate just how much the 1970s flipped the entire economic playbook on its head. Up until then, experts didn’t even think stagflation was possible. How could you possibly have rising inflation, a heating of the economy, and rising unemployment, a cooling of the economy happening at the same time? But in the early 1970s, the United States did something shocking.

President Nixon delinked the dollar from gold, which changed everything. Suddenly, the handcuffs were off and the government had the green light to print without limit. And spend they did.

But things got really nasty in 1973 when OPEC cut oil production, meaning that prices shot up. As energy prices went up, so did inflation. But at the same time, unemployment rose.

Growth stalled. But these weren’t just numbers on a chart. These were everyday people being impacted by these.

Grocery prices are bad now, but imagine the cost of meat going up 75% in just three months. While your mortgage quadrupled and millions of people, the most since the Great Depression, were unemployed. But the worst part about it, nothing could be done to fix the crisis for years.

This is the reason why economists hate stagflation, because every solution, every seeming solution to the problem ends up backfiring. If you cut rates to stimulate growth and job creation, well, you risk inflation rapidly rising. But if you raise rates to fight inflation, well, now you risk losing even more jobs and growth slowing even more significantly.

So either way, it’s a lose-lose situation. At the end of the day, it took going nuclear on rates, raising them to 20% to crush inflation. But in the process of crushing inflation, they also crushed the economy.

With unemployment reaching 11% at its peak and the stock market losing half of its value in real terms. But that was then. There’s no gold standard to break today.

So what is triggering these stagflation fears now? In 2020, the government pumped trillions into the economy and the Fed slashed interest rates near zero. Now, this flood of cheap money at first boosted spending in the economy, but it came at a cost. As you well know, inflation took off.

And although they told us it was transitory, we all know you can’t pump trillions of dollars into a system and not expect there to be consequences. Somehow we were able to kick the can down the road the last five years. But if you fast forward to today, there’s a new catalyst, a trade war prompted by tariffs, which act as self-imposed supply shock, driving up consumer prices and production costs while simultaneously slowing economic growth.

But before I continue to talk about today, I know someone out there is going to jump in and say, OK, but today is nowhere near as bad as it was in the 1970s. And in some ways, you’re right. It’s not for now.

Unemployment, although taking up is still relatively low at four point two percent and inflation, although it’s well above the Fed’s two percent target at two point eight percent, has come down significantly from its peak. But do not let these numbers fool you, because the underlying dynamics, the supply shocks, the inflationary pressures, the economic slowdown, these all mirror the conditions that led to stagflation back in the 1970s, especially when you look at where the U.S. is headed. The Atlanta Fed is now predicting negative GDP growth for Q1 of this year.

And with layoffs on the rise and bankruptcies on the rise, you can only imagine that unemployment will rise to unemployment, which is historically a lagging indicator, not a predictive one. This is the dangerous in between inflation. It’s not gone.

It never left. But the economy is obviously slowing down significantly. This is where the Fed does their little dance, because if they cut rates too soon, well, then we know inflation is probably going to go up.

But if they raise rates, well, economic slowdown is a certainty, but it’s going to happen at an even faster, more painful pace. And if they try and thread the needle the way that they have been, well, we better hope that they’re good at sewing, because this would not be a temporary setback. This would be a long, painful journey that we all would be on together because this time could be way worse than the 1970s.

Let me explain. Although the numbers themselves, the indicators, the unemployment, the growth and the inflation don’t look as dramatic yet, the foundation that we are standing on today is far worse, far shakier than it was in the 1970s. Government debt is 36 trillion dollars and growing by the trillion every couple months, something that was not happening as rapidly back in the 1970s.

And on top of that, today’s global economy is so intertwined, so interconnected, and it therefore is so fragile. When we look at tariffs and trade wars and all of these risks bubbling up together, the type of crash that could happen, the type of economic slowdown that could result in rapid unemployment and inflation at the same time could be significant compared to what we saw in the 1970s. But that’s not all.

Households are also stretched so thin, with most American savings completely depleted and households relying on credit to survive in a way that they were not in the 1970s, meaning this is not just a policy problem. If stagflation were to hit full force, this would be a crisis for everyday Americans. So are we staring at another stagflationary era? I don’t know with certainty, but what I do know is that unfortunately things are going to get a whole lot worse before they potentially get better.

And I know that you can’t control the Fed, you can’t stop Congress from spending, and you can’t control inflation. The only thing you can really control is how you choose to protect your wealth now with the information that you know. But that’s where gold comes in.

Gold, which is real and tangible, has been at the center of every currency failure, debt spiral, and financial reset, including if we look at what happened during stagflation of the 1970s. Now the U.S. dollar, fiat currency, it lost about 50%, half of its purchasing power during this time period. But gold, if you look at gold during the same time period in 1971, was $35 an ounce.

And by the end of this stagflationary period, it was over $800 an ounce. But that’s not because people were using gold as a trade or a get-rich-quick scheme. No, they were using gold as their insurance policy because they saw what was happening to the value of their dollar.

It didn’t matter whether they were the best saver in the world, whether they were a hard worker. The devaluation of the U.S. dollar did not discriminate or choose favorites. No, across the board, everyone who held their wealth in the U.S. dollar lost significant purchasing power, meaning your savings, your retirement, everything that’s in fiat currency lost its value.

But meanwhile, gold again, that was the flight to safety. Those who were prepared for stagflation came out on top. Those who wait until it’s too late, it’s a lot harder to come back from.

And I know not everyone has the privilege or the opportunity or the time to be able to rebuild if all of that wealth is taken from you. Now, the fact that you’re already watching this video is an incredible first step because if you are educating yourself on what could happen or what’s going on out there right now in the world, you are already 10 steps ahead. But I do also always say that it is action that will truly protect you from what’s coming next.

Education is an essential first step, but it is action that will truly protect your wealth and make sure you can sleep well at night. So if any of this has been concerning to you or you want to learn more and take action, a terrific first step is to download our free gold and silver guide. I talk about it all the time because it’s a free resource.

Why wouldn’t you download it? It’s easy to do. We have our QR code. You can scan and get your copy today or we have a download link down below.

And as a second step to understand how we can help you, you can call us at the number below. You can again scan the QR code or click on the link below and talk to one of our expert analysts. They have years of experience in helping people just like you prepare for what’s coming next.

Because again, the last thing you want to be is unprepared for whatever situation is coming next. If you believe that things are going to get worse and not better, if you believe that your dollar is going to continue to be devalued, your purchasing power chipped away, well then there’s really no better time to take action than right now. Make sure that you’re protected, that you at least have your insurance policy or strategy in place so that again you can sleep well at night.

And in the meantime, I so appreciate you being here. I’m Taylor Kenney with ITM Trading, your trusted source for all things gold, silver and lifelong wealth protection. Until next time.