Stocks Soar on Trade War De-Escalation Hopes (Uncut) 05-03-2025

Stocks Soar on Trade War De-Escalation Hopes – Ep 1024

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Welcome everybody to another episode of the Peter Schiff Show podcast. Well, you know, when the month of April started out, we were on track for probably one of the worst April’s in the stock market. Certainly the worst since 2020, the COVID April.

But it may have been worse than that, you know, following Liberation Day on April 2nd. But over the past two weeks or so, we’ve had a complete reversal of that decline. And in fact, the NASDAQ, which I think was down the most other than the Russell 2000, but I think post Liberation Day during the month of April, the NASDAQ was down more during that month.

The NASDAQ actually recovered all of its losses and closed positive on the month. The other major indexes were only slightly in the red. In fact, the S&P closed out this week with its ninth consecutive rise.

That’s the longest winning streak for the S&P 500 since 2004. So 21 years, we haven’t had a winning streak this great. So what’s the deal, right? Why did the stock market rally so much? Now, of course, it went down.

So it went down and then it came back up. But the market was way overvalued before it went down. Even absent the trade war and the tariffs and all that, the market was already poised to go down.

And the economy is in bad shape. And we’re going to get into that later in the podcast. So there was a lot of reason for the market to go down.

The question is, why did it go back up? And I think the reason for this rally, and I don’t think it’s going to sustain itself. And, you know, there’s an old Wall Street adage, sell in May and go away. And so the people who sold in April, it looks like they didn’t go away.

They came back. But maybe there’ll be some selling in May. And if you’re smart, you’ll go away.

Or at least go to foreign markets. Go to other investments that have a lot more potential than the U.S. stock market. But I think what really powered the gains was the appearance of a de-escalation of the trade war.

And some optimism that, hey, maybe it’s not going to be as bad as we thought. When, of course, it’s actually going to be worse than they thought. They didn’t realize how bad it was going to be.

But now they think it’s not going to be as bad as they thought. Because of a lot of the rhetoric coming mostly from the Trump administration. But a little bit also coming out of Beijing regarding lowering the tariffs and, you know, trying to find some kind of resolution to the tension.

You know, in fact, China announced that they were going to be rolling back some of their own tariffs just unilaterally. They decided that, you know, some of these 125 percent tariffs that they were going to roll them back because they realized that some of these goods that they are importing from the U.S. are very important. And maybe they don’t have a readily available substitute.

So they want to lower the tariffs because the tariffs harm themselves, which is what I’ve been saying all along. I mean, if the 125 percent tariffs just harmed America, then why would China want to lower them? They’re lowering them because they understand that tariffs always hurt most the country that imposes them, which means all of our tariffs are going to hurt us way more than they’re going to hurt our trading partners, which is what I’ve been saying from the beginning. But here is the ridiculous part of it.

So you could say, well, maybe this is some kind of olive branch that, you know, the Chinese are laying out there, right? They’re unilaterally dialing back some of these tariffs. But I was watching an interview with Scott Besson and he seemed annoyed by it. And he said, look, you know, I’ve got an escalation letter in my back pocket.

I might have to pull it out where we’re going to embargo those goods that China is reducing the tariffs on. So in other words, we wanted to punish them for reducing the tariffs. I mean, which is it? We’re claiming that the problem is China has tariffs that are keeping our goods out.

And so we’re trying to punish them for having tariffs or too high tariffs. Then China lowers some tariffs back and we want to punish them for that, too. But it’s completely inconsistent.

But what Besson was saying is, aha, China is showing us where they’re vulnerable. They’re showing us what goods they really need. So let’s prevent them from having those goods.

But, you know, one of the things about the Constitution, I don’t know if an embargo would qualify as an export tax, but Congress is given the authority in the Constitution to tax exports. So tariffs are OK, but they’re not allowed. In fact, they’re specifically prohibited, not that they even have to be, but they can’t tax exports.

They’re not allowed to do that. So we couldn’t tax products that are being shipped to China. Now, maybe an embargo where you can’t even ship it.

Maybe they can come up with some BS national security reason why we can’t send China these products. And maybe that somehow would would pass constitutional muster, which isn’t really hard to do these days because they kind of get away with murder at the government when it comes to the Constitution. But it’s more the hypocrisy of, you know, heads I win, tails you lose, where we want to go after China for having higher tariffs.

And then we want to go after them again if they lower tariffs. I guess, you know, we don’t want them lowering tariffs unless it’s part of some grand deal that Trump could take credit for. But that’s also, I think, what’s been going on in the optimism is that the administration keeps talking about how well these negotiations are going and how they’re very close to these great deals, these great trade deals.

And the markets are taking that as OK, great. You know, maybe the trade war is going to end. Not that, you know, these trade deals have the potential to actually deliver anything other than relief from our own tariffs, because I don’t know what it is that we’re trying to win, because most of the countries that we are negotiating with have very low or nonexistent tariffs right now.

In fact, in most cases, our tariffs are higher than some of their tariffs. And so, I mean, what are we you know, are we going to end up lowering our tariffs more? And by Trump’s own definition, would that be be a win for them? I mentioned South Korea. I forget if I mentioned the last podcast, but that’s one of the countries that, oh, we’re close to a deal with South Korea.

Well, their their average tariff rate on our stuff is point seven five percent, not even one percent. I mean, so what are they going to drop that to zero? I mean, you think that’s going to move the needle? You think a point seven five percent average tariff rate is what’s causing our trade deficit with South Korea? I mean, our our tariffs before Trump jacked them way up last year, our average tariff rate on their goods was three point three percent. So, you know, we got higher tariffs than they do.

But this is pretty much the same with all these countries. There’s really not much to gain from tariffs going to zero when they’re not at that far from zero right now. But I don’t even think that any of the deals we’re going to negotiate are going to mean no tariffs at all.

I mean, maybe there’ll be a little bit. I mean, Trump talks about in his advisers, the non-tariff barriers. And I don’t really know what can be done.

They claim that the value added tax is a non-tariff barrier, but it’s not. They just completely misunderstand how the value added tax works. You know, one of the other non-tariff barriers that Bessett keeps talking about is foreign exchange, which is also one of the hypocrisies, because I saw him interviewed and he specifically said, one of the ways that the world is cheating us is by undervaluing their currency, that their currencies are too low.

So in other words, they’re helping to make the dollar stronger. And that’s how they’re cheating. But in the same interview, almost like one sentence away, he was asked about the strong dollar policy and he said, oh, absolutely, we have a strong dollar policy.

OK, well, if we have a strong dollar policy and he not only said that we have a strong dollar policy, he said he wants a strong dollar. Well, which is it? He’s criticizing our trading partners for helping to keep the dollar strong in the same breath, really, that he says he wants a strong dollar. I mean, how do you have a strong and weak dollar at the same time? You can’t say that it’s unfair that we have a strong dollar when that’s exactly what you want.

Now, what if what he really wants is for the dollar to weaken? If he thinks that the strong dollar is a problem for us and that’s the reason we have these trade deficits, then why do we have a strong dollar policy? Why don’t we just come out and say we have a weak dollar policy if he wants a weaker dollar? Because he can’t say that. Because if he says we have a weak dollar policy, we’re going to get a weak dollar even faster, which is going to be a big problem because we’re trying to sell our bonds all over the world. And those bonds are denominated in dollars.

Who wants to buy a dollar denominated bond if our policy is to weaken the dollar? Nobody’s going to buy it. Well, we need people to buy it. That’s why we have to have a strong dollar policy.

But then we can’t blame the strong dollar for our trade deficit. We can’t say the rest of the world is cheating because their currencies are undervalued when it’s supposedly our policy for the dollar to be strong. Now, maybe he has some new definition of a strong dollar, which means it’s actually a weak dollar.

And it’s a weak dollar that we decided is a strong dollar. I don’t know. But that’s the only really non-tariff barrier that he’s identified.

Now, I believe that we’re going to he’s going to get that we’re going to get a weaker dollar. And in fact, I mentioned that the stock market has recovered pretty much all of its post liberation day losses. But the dollar has barely recovered.

I mean, it was up a little bit on the week. The dollar index was up about a half a percent. We managed to finish, I think, slightly above 100.

Remember, the low was below 98. So we have had a bounce in the dollar. But it hasn’t come back to where it was or even close prior to Liberation Day.

The same thing with Treasury yields, which rose on the week again. The yield on the 10 year Treasury is four point three. Remember, it was below four on Liberation Day and the 30 year is at four point eight.

Remember, the highest we got on those rates was just over four and a half on the 10 year and five on the 30. And it was the four and a half percent area. That’s what caused Trump to surrender on the reciprocal tariffs with the 90 day pause.

But I think that treasuries are headed back down to, you know, to make new lows and yields are going to make new highs. So we’re going to see what happens. But, you know, the dollar is not out of the woods.

The bond market is not out of the woods. And even though the stock market has, in fact, rallied, I don’t think it’s out of the woods because the damage is already done. If we call off the trade war, a lot of damage has already been done and it’s too late to undo it, because the fact that these tariffs are here now has already impacted the economy.

Not immediately, but several months from now, when all these goods that we are used to imported don’t come in because all the orders were canceled. And you could read all the articles about ships that are arriving half empty now from China. And eventually they won’t even bother to show up because there’ll be nothing to put in them.

And and so all of this is going to have an impact. I mean, right now, remember, a lot of businesses were front running these tariffs. So they still have inventory to sell because they ordered this stuff before the tariffs hit.

Now, they’re not ordering it now. Right. So the economic data that we’re getting now hasn’t been impacted.

And I’m going to go over that again in a bit. But so we haven’t really seen the impact. I mean, we initially saw some impact in the stock market and maybe in consumer confidence.

But the real economy hasn’t really felt the sting of these tariffs. And even if we call them off, it’s going to take a long time to restart that. And we’re still going to have to go through this air pocket where we just don’t have any supply of goods.

And that’s going to impact GDP in in future quarters more so than the report that we that we just got earlier today. And I’m going to get into all that, all that data on the other side of this break. But before I go, I want to remember I want to I mean, I want to remind myself, you know, to point something out.

So I don’t forget. But you may have noticed that if you didn’t notice, that’s why I want to point this out. Shift Gold sent out an email today to its entire database.

And it’s asking for some information or for you to respond to a privacy policy change. It’s a you know, the title is important update message. But the reason I wanted to bring it up is because it’s been sent out as an opt out, meaning that if you don’t respond to this email, your consent will be assumed.

And if you don’t want to consent to what the email is asking, you need to positively opt out by clicking clicking a link that says, no, you don’t agree. You want to opt out. And the reason I want to point it out is because some people might not notice it.

You know, you get a lot of junk mail and you just ignore it. So if you do get an email from Shift Gold, I think it’s from info at Shift Gold. Open it up.

Read what it’s got to say. And then if you have no problem with what it’s asking, then you can ignore it. But if you don’t want to go along with it, then you need to let us know.

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There will be a follow up, one follow up email that will come out on Monday. So for some reason you didn’t see it today, you’ll have another chance of getting it on Monday. So just open it up.

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We got a quick break. We’re coming right back. So stick around.

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Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC have not been vetted or endorsed by me or Euro Pacific Asset Management. OK, we’re talking about the reaction, the positive reaction in the markets to a lot of positive talk on the de-escalation of the trade war, the ending of the trade war that maybe it won’t wage as long as we thought. But the point I want to reiterate is the reason the markets are likely happy.

Is not that we’re going to win the trade war. In that it’s just going to end. And all of these negotiations that the Trump administration is referring to, to the extent that these negotiations are actually going on.

What we’re most likely to win is not a concession from our trading partners, but our own concession. What we’re going to win is relief from our own tariffs. That is what we have to gain.

Right. Nothing that the other countries can do for us will be as good as what we do for ourselves by removing our own tariffs. Right.

So that’s how we win. Right. We win by obtaining relief from what we have already done to ourselves.

So if Trump wants to claim a big victory from that, hey, I was I was really, you know, you know, kicking the U.S. economy in the groin and I stopped kicking them. So now, you know, now now it’s a big victory. Right.

I mean, he’s not going to frame it like that. But that’s really where it is, because there’s not much that we could really gain in concessions. Because as I’ve said many times, the trade, I mean, the tariffs that other countries have have absolutely nothing to do with our trade deficits that we have with almost every country in the world.

Right. Whether they have tariffs or not. This is an American problem.

It is not a China problem or a Canada problem or a Mexico problem, though. We know we made it a Canada problem by basically influencing the results of their election. I’m actually going to mention that a little bit later on, but that’s too bad for Canada.

They got collateral damage in this trade war in the results of their most recent election for prime minister. But anyway, it’s that optimism. I think it’s false optimism because I don’t think Trump is going to walk away from this.

You know, even if the tariffs are lower. There’s still going to be high. And there’s still going to be a problem.

But we’ve already basically fired another shot. In addition to what Biden did with the sanctions, we’re telling the world, look, this relationship is not going to continue forever. You can’t keep selling us stuff and loaning us money.

You got to wean yourself off of supporting the United States. You know, I was laughing when I heard Bessett talking. I don’t know.

This one wasn’t Bessett. I think this was I know. Yeah, it wasn’t Bessett.

It was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, you know, Trump’s top economic advisor. And he basically had a warning for Europe. He said that, you know, Europe, you guys better look out over there.

You’re in trouble because China, because they can’t, you know, sell their products to us right now because of our tariffs. They’re going to start dumping all these low priced goods on Europe. And so Europe better look out because China is coming after you with low priced goods, which is laughable because there’s no threat there.

That is a positive thing. If now China starts offering more products to Europeans at lower prices than before, and maybe they can because the euro has gone up. Right.

How does that hurt Europe? Now, Europeans get to buy a bunch of stuff that Americans can no longer afford. You know, Donald Trump kind of laughed it off. Somebody asked him in one of his cabinet meetings, you know, about, you know, about this problem.

And he came up with he said, well, you know, instead of buying 30 Barbies, maybe you’ll just buy two and maybe they’ll be slightly more expensive. Well, they won’t be slightly more expensive. You’ll probably pay for two Barbies what you used to pay for 30.

Right. Because if they were only slightly more expensive, Mattel wouldn’t be making them in China. The fact of the matter is they would be very expensive if they were made here.

But what Trump is really saying is kind of what Jimmy Carter said about, you know, the energy crisis where he said, well, just wear a sweater. Right. When people were complaining about how, you know, people couldn’t afford to turn up their thermostat in the winter.

And he was like, well, put on a sweater. Right. He’s basically saying, well, just get used to a lower standard of living.

And that’s really what Trump is saying. He’s saying, look, our kids are going to have to get used to not having so many dolls. You know, our kids are spoiled.

Yeah. My daughter’s got dolls all over her room, not just Barbies. I forget all these different dolls that she’s she’s got so many Barbies she can’t even play with.

But she’s got these other dolls that are more expensive than the American Girl dolls. Got a bunch of those. I forget.

I mean, it’s like a giant doll house she’s living in. But, you know, I’m sure a lot of other little girls have a bunch of dolls, too. And they’re all spoiled because we have so many dolls, because China makes them so cheap.

You know, if they were a lot more expensive, we wouldn’t have them. So that’s really what China Trump was saying is, well, our kids had better get ready. You know, especially this Christmas, there’s going to be a lot of coal in stockings because, you know, as far as I know, the North Pole, Santa’s workshop, it ain’t in the North Pole.

It’s in China. That’s where Santa makes all his toys. Right.

Nothing’s made in the North Pole. It’s all made in China. In fact, when kids write letters to Santa Claus, they ought to send them all to China.

Right. Because that’s where it’s all coming from. So, yeah, all this stuff is going to stop.

And I hear all these stories about small businesses that are just, you know, don’t know what they’re going to do. Don’t know how they’re going to survive. Right.

None of this is in the economic data yet because it hasn’t happened yet. It’s going to it’s like this huge wave that you could see. Right.

It’s offshore. It’s building. It’s going to come crashing down.

Right. But the markets are just looking, looking behind and they don’t pretend they don’t notice it. But anyway, so the numbers, the Dow is up two and a half percent on the week.

Nasdaq three point six percent on the week. Russell two thousand two point eight and the S&P as well. Gold stocks got hit.

Gold was down two percent on the week. It closed at two three thousand two hundred and forty. I think something like that.

Let me take a look. Yeah. Three thousand two.

Forty one. Sixty. You know, I heard a lot of talk.

That’s it. The bull market’s over. Blow off top.

Blow off top. Right. Finally, it’s the it’s over.

Right. It was too speculative. There was no speculation there.

Yes, it got a little hot for a few days and now it’s come down. But, you know, it’s way above the prior resistance. So it’s a massive breakout of the price of gold.

And it wasn’t a bunch of speculators that were buying gold. In fact, the public was selling gold stocks all month. Even during the rally, you were getting net outflows at a GX and GDXJ.

And they certainly weren’t buying physical gold. I mean, the phones weren’t ringing off the hook at shift gold. I mean, it picked up a little bit, but really not much because the public is mainly selling their gold.

We have a lot of people. I’ve talked to other gold companies. People have been calling up to sell their gold because they need the money and now they can get a higher price.

And so they’re making a mistake. They should keep their gold, sell something else because gold is going to go up. But it wasn’t a bunch of speculation.

But, you know, this was a risk on week. People were thinking, aha, the worst is behind us. It’s not going to be as bad as we thought.

Yeah, I’m going to buy some risk assets and I don’t need a safe haven. And so you got selling in gold. You got buying in in tech stocks.

You also got buying in Bitcoin. Bitcoin was up about two and a half percent on the week to in line with the Nasdaq. And, you know, just before this week, I was here at a lot of the Bitcoin guys because Bitcoin didn’t get clobbered when Nasdaq, you know, had its final leg down because it kind of led to decline and then kind of bottomed out.

And then the Nasdaq kept falling and Bitcoin went sideways. And everybody was saying, aha, you see, Bitcoin is finally decoupled from the Nasdaq. It’s no longer just a proxy for tech.

It’s not a risk on. It’s more like gold. It’s more risk off.

It’s more safe haven. And, of course, none of that was true because Bitcoin traded nothing like gold this week. It traded the opposite of gold and it traded in lockstep with the Nasdaq.

So that’s really what it is. Right. Bitcoin is like the Nasdaq, except why buy Bitcoin? Just buy tech stocks.

Right. If you want to buy a safe haven, if you’re worried about inflation and dollar depreciation, then you buy gold. If you want to speculate on the direction of the Nasdaq, just buy tech stocks.

That’s better than buying Bitcoin, because eventually Bitcoin is going to decouple from everything and just go straight down. So, you know, eventually tech stocks will go up and Bitcoin will go down. So you’re better off if you want to speculate on tech.

Don’t do it through Bitcoin. Just just buy the buy the tech. Let me get into some of the good news.

Right. That propelled the market. I’ll start today and work backwards.

And that was the jobs report, the jobs report that came out today, nonfarm payroll for April. And. Once again, just like we’ve done for the past couple of years, we had a stronger than expected government jobs report.

The expectation was for a increase of one hundred and thirty thousand jobs. And. We ended up getting one hundred and seventy seven thousand, so a beat.

Right. We got more jobs. In fact, if you look at the range of expectations, it went from a low of twenty five thousand to a high of one hundred sixty five thousand.

And the actual number was one hundred and seventy seven thousand. So we came in above the high end of of estimates. Now, the.

Prior month, of course, was revised down, as was the month before that. So the March number was originally reported at two hundred twenty eight thousand and we celebrated that number last month. That was revised down to one hundred eighty five thousand.

So if you take the revisions from February, March. It’s basically a push. We didn’t really beat the number, but the headlines, nobody focuses on the revisions that that hasn’t changed.

I’m looking at all the headlines and it’s all about the April beat. The revisions get buried lower down in the story. So everybody is going to celebrate this strong jobs report, but it’s not really a strong jobs report.

It’s just another one of these bogus reports that we’ve been used to getting under the Biden administration. Looking through the jobs, its service sector, you know, hospitality, health care, restaurants, bartenders, stuff like that. Manufacturing lost a thousand jobs.

Right. Well, this is supposed to be a manufacturing revolution. I know we barely started with the trade war, but again, we are losing manufacturing jobs.

We’re not gaining manufacturing jobs. We’re gaining the same type of jobs that we were supposedly gaining, you know, when when Biden was president. And in fact, again, the birth death model of companies that contributed three hundred and ninety three thousand jobs.

I’m not sure how that drops down to the bottom line, but that was a big number. That’s the biggest number in two years. Now, it just doesn’t pass the smell test.

Then in the month of April, when all this stuff is going on, consumer confidence is plunging. Business confidence is plunging. The stock market is plunging.

You know, at least the first half. Right. Everybody is uncertain about what’s going to happen.

That all of a sudden, all these people decided now’s a great time to start a business and start hiring. Do you really think I mean, I think more people were worried that they were going to have to shut their business down during the month of April. Then we’re like ready to open up a new business and go on a on a hiring spree.

So, I mean, all these numbers, they never make any sense to me. They come from the government and I just don’t believe government numbers. And again, look at the jobs numbers that came out earlier in the week.

So the prior day on Thursday, we got a much bigger than expected jobless claim number. They were looking for two hundred twenty one thousand and it jumped up to two hundred forty one thousand. That’s a pretty big number.

And a four week moving average moved up from two hundred and two point two to two hundred twenty six. That is a big jump in the four week moving average. So we’re getting more people unemployed.

And by the way, I read an article that a lot of people now are having their unemployment claims denied. So they don’t count. It’s like a record number of claims are being denied.

And it’s probably because they’re not really eligible. They’re still unemployed, but maybe they were just working in the gig economy. They were working for themselves and so they don’t qualify.

But there’s a lot of unemployed people that are losing their jobs. They can’t get unemployment. And so they’re not on they’re not part of these records.

Challenger job cuts came out yesterday as well. Another big number, not as huge as the number before, which was two hundred seventy five thousand, because that had a lot of the I think a lot of the doge layoffs were in there. But one hundred and five thousand four hundred forty one announced layoffs in April.

That’s still a big number. And by the way, you know, there’s still a lot of government jobs that were added. We didn’t lose government jobs.

We gained government jobs according to the April employment. Now, maybe, you know, it doesn’t specify federal versus state or local. So maybe we did lose some jobs.

We probably did on the federal payrolls, but we gained them in the state and local government. So they’re hiring more government workers. So, you know, it’s six or one to have, you know, twelve, half, twelve, six or one, a half dozen of the other.

I think that’s the expression. But we’re still having to cover their costs. But look at the ADP report.

That’s private sector payrolls. Right. So it’s got nothing to do with government, private sector payrolls that came out on Wednesday.

And that one was way below consensus, much further below consensus than the government report was above it. You know, especially when you factor in the revisions, because this report also had downward revisions to the prior month. So the expectation for the ADP was for one hundred twenty five thousand jobs.

We only had sixty two thousand. That’s below the low end. The range was eighty thousand to one hundred and fifty and we came out at sixty two.

And to add insult to injury, the prior month’s one hundred fifty five thousand was revised down to one hundred forty seven thousand. So that’s a weak number. And then finally, on I think it was Tuesday of this week, we got the jolts number.

And that was also way below estimates. Now, the jolts, that is the job openings that companies have. You know, they’re looking for workers.

And so those are open jobs. Right. You know, like the old help wanted ads.

They were looking for seven point four, six, four million of these job openings. Instead, we had seven point one nine two million again, way below the low end. The low end of the estimate was seven point three million.

The high end was seven point eight. We came in at seven point one nine two. And the prior month, which was seven point five, six, eight million was revised down to seven point four eight.

So all of the numbers that we got. On jobs were well below estimates, with the lone exception of the one we got today from the Labor Department, which is notoriously revised downward either the next month or maybe six months or a year later. So I’m pretty sure that we’re going to find out that most, if not all of the jobs that were reported to have been created in the month of April don’t actually exist.

They’re a figment of the imagination, the statisticians. But let me look at some of the other data that came out this week. This was all the data, almost all of it below estimates.

Factory orders were not that bad. A little bit below. They were supposed to be four and a half and they were up four point three.

But I think that was a big bump in civilian aircraft. I think they were trying to get some stuff done before the tariffs. And so that impacted the factory orders.

But construction spending was supposed to rise point two instead of fell point five. Again, worse than the low end of the estimates. And they revised the prior month down from point seven to point six.

And construction spending year over year dropped from three point four the prior month down to two point eight. So obviously construction spending going down, interest rates are going up. Economic outlook is darkening.

So less less construction. The ISM manufacturing index that actually was a little bit better than estimate. It was supposed to be forty seven point nine.

It came out of forty eight point seven. But it’s still below 50 and it’s weaker than it was the month before when it was at forty nine. Anything below 50 is contraction.

So it’s not that it’s good news from the ISM manufacturing. It’s still contracting. It’s just contracting a little less than we thought, although that might pick up next month.

The only one that was above 50, the PMI final PMI, which is a composite, but it came in light. It was supposed to come in at fifty point seven and it came in at fifty point two. So barely above 50 and below what had been estimated.

Look at the GDP number. We got the GDP for Q1. And remember, the Atlanta Fed was looking for a print of like minus two percent.

Right. Nobody else was looking for that. In fact, the consensus among everybody was that we’d have slow growth of point two.

Well, we ended up with with point three. That was the number. So a contraction.

Now, I think it’s going to end up being revised to a bigger contraction because they’re going to revise this a few times. And I think it’s actually going to be lower than minus point three. But, you know, on the same day that that was released, Donald Trump was given his speech for the hundred days of his administration, where he claims that, you know, this is the best start to an administration in the history of the country, that the economy has never been this strong, that he said in a different speech, that it’s roaring like it’s never roared before.

Right. So we’ve got the strongest economy ever right now, despite the fact that GDP is contracted. But, you know, if Trump is claiming that we already have the strongest economy ever right now, that means it’s stronger than it was during his first term because he claims that that was the strongest economy ever.

So in the span of 100 days, we’ve gone from the weakest economy in U.S. history to the strongest economy in U.S. history. And what has actually been done? Other than we have laid off a few workers at Doge and we started a trade war that we can’t win. But apart from that, what’s happened? You know, how is it that we’ve gone from the worst to the best in 100 days? Again, this is just all talk.

Right. I mean, this is all fantasy that the economy is roaring like ever before. And, you know, Trump’s popularity, you know, his approval rating is the lowest of any president, you know, since they started keeping the records back, I guess, in the 1940s.

The only president, you know, he he took he beat his own record from his first term. But I heard him in his speech and he said, oh, the polls are wrong. He thinks his popularity is up in the 60s because he’s claiming they’re only polling Democrats or they’re over polling Democrats.

You know, it makes sense to me that he would be unpopular because, number one, he already has a lot of people that don’t like him. Right. So they’re there no matter what.

Even if he was doing good, they wouldn’t like him. But remember, there are a lot of people that were promised a lot of stuff that hasn’t been delivered. Trump said everything was going to be great the minute, you know, I step into office.

Prices are going to go way down. Everything is going to boom. Right.

And the fact of the matter is that that hasn’t happened. So it makes sense that there’s going to be a lot of disappointed people. I mean, what Trump should do is acknowledge that.

Yes, I know people weren’t necessarily prepared for the short term pain, but don’t worry. You know, there’s long term gain coming. I understand.

Yes. Of course, he didn’t prepare anybody for the short term pain. So that’s, you know, partially on him because he didn’t level with the public.

Of course, the pain is going to be a lot more than short term. And there’s no gain coming because we’re not actually fixing the problems. Right.

We’re not ripping the bandaid off. We’re not biting the bullet. We’re not taking the medicine.

We’re blaming the rest of the world for our problems and saying that the solution lies in the rest of the world, you know, to end screwing us over and ripping us off and taking advantage of us when they haven’t done any of those things. But anyway, so we got this week a GDP number, which and I think we’re going to get another negative number in Q in Q2. But we we may not.

I mean, this is kind of like the consequence of these tariffs is that there is a lot of economic activity that’s been front loaded because people are trying to beat the tariffs. And so people have gone out and bought stuff that maybe they would have bought later, but they’re afraid because the price is going to be a lot higher. So they’re buying it now.

And so there is some economic activity that we’re pulling forward from the second half of the year and cramming it in. Now, you know, while there’s still some inventory to buy. But, you know, I think a lot of these companies that brought in inventory pre tariff, I think they’re going to start raising prices on that stuff, even though they didn’t have to pay the tariff to bring it in, because they know that once they run out of that stuff, they’re done.

Right. They’re out of business. So they got to make hay while the sun shines.

They got to start charging more for the stuff they have, because when they run out, there goes the sale. Right. They’re not going to be able to replace their inventory.

So they have to start making up for it by charging more now. But, you know, here’s going to be part of the problem, too, of the tariffs. There are going to be a lot of people who just can’t afford the higher prices.

Right. So they just don’t buy because they can’t afford it. Right.

Hey, you know, you’ve jacked up the price. It’s beyond my budget. I’m just going to go without it.

Maybe they find a lower price alternative or maybe the lower priced alternative is still is still too expensive. Right. But there’s going to be some people that can’t afford the higher prices, but they still will be reluctant to pay them, especially, I think, for a big ticket item, because I think a lot of people will think, you know what? This product is only 50 percent more expensive or double the cost.

You know, if it’s coming from China because of these tariffs, I know the tariffs are not going to stick around. Trump’s going to you know, there’s going to be a resolution. The tariffs are going to be lowered or they’re going to go away.

I’m just going to wait it out. I’m not going to be a fool and rush in to buy a car or, you know, an expensive, you know, major appliance or some big ticket item only to watch the price price plunge right after I buy it. I don’t want to do that.

So I think there’s going to be a chilling effect, you know, two ways. One, some people will be priced out of the market and they won’t buy, but other people will be reluctant to buy because they don’t want to be the sucker to buy it right before the price plunges. So all those decisions are going to be impacting future economic numbers.

Factory orders, you know, they were up four point three, not a terrible number, but, you know, lower than expected. They were looking for up four point five. In fact, the range of expectations was from up point five to up eight.

And we got. Oh, no. So in the middle of up four point three.

So kind of in the middle. The prior number was a lot lower. It was revised down from point six to point five.

That wasn’t the worst number that we got on the on the week. But we got the international trade deficit again, another horrible number, not as horrible as a couple of months ago, but worse than February. The February number was one hundred forty seven point eight billion deficit.

This is this is the goods deficit, right? This is not the unified deficit. That includes our our services surplus. One hundred and sixty two billion dollar trade deficit.

And that was a big increase from the prior month led by imports. Imports rose by five percent. Our exports only rose by one point two percent.

And in fact, we revised down the prior month’s four point one percent increase to three point six. So we’re not seeing a lot more exports. That’s the goal of the tariffs.

Right. To increase our exports. What’s increasing our imports.

Our imports are soaring and that’s subtracting from GDP and it’s going to subtract more from from GDP when they revise it. Dallas Fed manufacturing, that was one of the weakest numbers we got. It was it plunged all the way down to minus thirty five point eight.

Can’t remember how many years ago it was. Maybe maybe during the covid shutdown, we got something like that. But outside of that, or maybe the 2008 financial crisis, you don’t see minus thirty five point eight.

The prior month was was a bad number to minus sixteen point three. But this one, you know, is more than double that. So that and that that that was earlier in the week.

And consumer confidence plunged to a 14 year low and inflation expectations keep soaring. They were looking for eighty seven and a half, which would have been a drop from the prior ninety three point nine. And it went down to eighty six.

Again, that’s a 14 year low in consumer confidence. And, you know, I think consumers are overconfident. They don’t realize how bad things are going to be.

Of course, unless Trump completely calls off the tariffs. But again, even if it does. Right.

We’ve had a big disruption to our supply chain. There’s gonna be a big bottleneck because let’s say a lot of goods haven’t been ordered because people don’t want to order them because they can’t afford to import it. So there’s a big gap.

And by the time the trade war is over and OK, maybe now I can import that stuff. You have this huge speed bump, right, that we’re going to have to go through. And in the meantime, I think the dollar is going to continue to fall and that’s going to be continuing to add pressure.

The only relief we’ve had so far is oil prices. Oil prices continue to fall. You know, they rose a little bit off the lows when Trump threatened to basically cut off any country from any dealings with the United States.

If they import Iranian oil, which is mainly targeted at China because they’re the biggest importers of Iranian oil. I mean, I wouldn’t imagine that that goes, you know, sits too well in Beijing when we’re saying we’re going to cut off all your access to the U.S. market. I wonder if that means like we’re not gonna let you buy our bonds anymore.

Right. That’s part of the access we’re going to cut off. You can’t loan us any more money.

Right. But we’re saying you can’t you can’t sell us any more products. But again, America needs their products more than China needs to sell them to us because they can sell them to somebody else.

They can consume those products themselves. They don’t need us to do the easy work and to consume the fruits of their labor. They can eat the fruits of their own labor or they can trade with other people who are also producing.

You know, by the way, Amazon. Came out and they said that they were going to include the extra cost of the tariffs. In their items like, you know, in the prices that they show on Amazon.

So if there’s an item that used to cost, let’s say, $50, but now it costs, you know, $100 because there’s a $50 tariff that’s now in the price. Amazon was going to say, here is this item costs $50 plus an extra 50 for the tariff. Total price, 100.

Now, as soon as the Trump administration got wind of that, Trump was on the phone with Jeff Bezos, like getting his mind right. Like you can’t do this. Right.

And apparently whatever he said succeeded, because the next thing you know, Amazon was like, oh, yeah, we never really. We’re never going to do that. No, I mean, we thought about it, but then we rejected it.

Yeah, because Donald Trump strong armed him. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that you would expect to go on in China. Right.

Where the leader of the country is basically pressuring a private company not to do something because it may embarrass the president. In fact, the president accused Amazon of doing this for political reasons. Right.

How is it political to level with your customers and let them know, hey, if you want to know why the price went way up, it’s not because we’re gouging you. It’s because of these tariffs. I mean, I like transparency.

That’s why I like a sales tax better than a value added tax, because it’s much more transparent, even though, you know, like what the value tax rate is. You don’t see it like when you’re in Europe and you buy something, the value added tax is embedded in the price. It’s not added on at the end.

But when you buy something in America, you see the price and then you see the tax on top of it. I prefer that, right, because now the public can see exactly what they’re paying and get mad about it. And if you try to raise the price, it’s harder when it’s embedded in the price like a bat.

You know, it’s easier to get away with a high tariff because the public forgets exactly how much money they’re paying. And it’s harder to avoid because, you know, it’s layered on each step of the way. But it’s nice to know.

And so all Amazon is trying to do is be honest. And Trump is like, no, you can’t do that. But of course, if what Trump said was true, because Trump told us that we wouldn’t have to pay the tariffs, that, you know, the Chinese were going to pay the tariffs, the Mexicans, the Canadians.

Well, then why is he worried about Amazon putting the reason for the price increase? Because he told us the prices weren’t going to go up, which is proof that that’s a lie. He knows prices are going to go up. He just doesn’t want Amazon reminding customers why they went up.

Right. Because of the tariffs, because he told everybody that that was external revenue, that Americans weren’t going to have to pay the tariffs. Right.

That we were going to be swimming in all this money because the Chinese were going to pay the tariffs and we were going to get tax cuts. We were going to finally make the rest of the world pay for the privilege of selling us stuff. Well, you know what? It’s not a privilege to sell us stuff, especially when we can’t afford it.

It’s actually a burden that the world has been willing to tolerate. The question is, how much longer will they tolerate it? But now we have to pay up because of of these tariffs. You know, the other thing that’s going to be a big impact is this de minimis exemption.

Which I think just just expired now because of Trump, the de minimis exemption means that if you import something directly right from China, it doesn’t go through an importer. It just comes in the mail in a little box. Right.

You order it. Anything under eight hundred bucks was exempt from the tariffs. So, you know, I mean, you get a lot of stuff in an eight hundred dollar pack, you know, box.

And, you know, there’s there’s an unlimited amount of stuff you could buy. So it’s not like you could just spend eight hundred dollars once. You could buy 10 packages with seven hundred fifty dollars worth of stuff and each one is going to come in tariff free.

And so a lot of, you know, clothing or, you know, you know, we buy clothes that way, beauty products, some consumer electronics. There’s a lot of stuff that Americans have been buying and not having to pay any tariffs. Well, now that’s all over.

Now, you know, they’re going to have to look at every box, which, of course, you know, takes time. I mean, that’s part of the reason for the exemption. Right.

Let’s say I import something for 20 bucks and let’s say there’s a normal tariff on there. Maybe it’s a two percent or three percent tariff. I mean, how much is it going to cost to open up that box? Take a look what’s in there so we can slap a two dollar tariff on it.

Right. You lose money. You spend more money trying to figure out how much is owed than you collect.

But now, you know, with China, with the tariffs are so high, you know, you buy a hundred dollar item and there’s a hundred dollar tariff. Right. The government wants that hundred dollars.

But the government also wants to stop the flow of imports. Now they’re claiming it’s because people are smuggling in fentanyl. And I suppose maybe some fentanyl is coming in that way, but it’s going to be a tiny percentage of the imports.

So all this is going to stop. And so Americans are going to lose are going to lose that that that that that benefit. But, you know, interestingly enough, let’s say Americans stop buying this stuff because it’s too expensive.

It doesn’t show up in the CPI because prices haven’t gone up. Americans just aren’t buying. Now, maybe they end up buying a U.S. item instead and pay a much higher price.

But if that’s the same price they always had, even though you’re now paying a higher price to buy something, the CPI doesn’t show a price increase. Only if the U.S. company increases its already high price again, which they may do because of the demand, then it would show up in the CPI potentially if it’s not hedonically adjusted away. But this is just more ways that this is going to hurt.

I wanted to mention quickly the Canadian elections. Pierre Polivari, who was the the conservative, had a good chance of winning. In fact, he probably would have won because Trudeau, who had to resign in disgrace, you know, very unpopular head of the Liberal Party.

The whole party was tarnished. So he was going to lose. But Mark Carney, right, you know, was, you know, stepped in when Trudeau resigned.

And Carney was going to lose until Donald Trump started, you know, this trade war with Canada and threatened to make Canada, you know, the 51st state and imposed all these tariffs. Carney was seen as, you know, the standing up to Trump and Canada in a patriotic, you know, fervor. They rallied around Carney as their champion to fight Donald Trump.

And, you know, Polivari was seen as, you know, an ally of Trump, even though he was trying to distance himself from Trump, too. He couldn’t get far enough away because, you know, he was the conservative guy. But he was the equivalent of their Republican.

And so Canada wanted to send a message that they were as anti-Trump as they possibly could be. So they shot themselves in the foot by electing Carney, who, you know, is a former central banker, not only a bank in Canada, but the Bank of England. So he’s been part of the problem for a long time.

He’s not part of the solution for Canada. But, you know, unfortunately, that’s what Canada got. Right.

You know, we stuck with the liberals again because, you know, they’re trying to rally together, you know, against against the stuff that Trump is doing. But, you know, one last thing that I wanted to mention. Well, apart from the fact, you know, I was listening on television on CBC and they’re talking about, you know, how everybody is surprised by the dollar.

Right. You know, nobody expected the dollar to go down. Everybody thought that tariffs would strengthen the dollar.

Yeah. Everybody said me. I mean, maybe there’s a few more people, but I’ve been saying this since before the tariffs were imposed.

Every time the dollar rallied, when it looked like Trump was going to win or they talked about tariffs, I saw the dollar was going up. Yes. But the dollar is going to go down.

The tariffs are going to weaken the dollar. They’re not going to strengthen the dollar. And all the people who thought the tariffs would strengthen the dollar.

The fact that the dollar did the opposite of what they thought is more proof that they don’t don’t understand the very tariffs that they’re imposing. Right. None of this is going to work.

The tariffs are not going to solve our our problems because foreign tariffs are not the cause of our problems. Foreign cheating, foreign non tariff barriers. None of this is the problem.

Focusing on that allows us to neglect the problem. We’re shifting the blame to other people. And that takes the blame away from us.

And then we don’t have to do anything because it’s not our fault. We’re being taken advantage of. We’re being screwed over.

We’re being exploited. Right. And yes, as Trump wins a lot of brownie points for saying that, like, yes, you know, I’m going to stick up for America.

But basically it allows the real problems to get worse. But the one thing that really bothered me coming from the Trump administration this week was I learned about this new executive branch, which is a private social club that’s opening up in the Washington, D.C. area. And it’s owned by the president’s son, Don Jr., and a few other crypto insiders.

I think David Sachs has got a piece of it, the Winklevoss, maybe Luskin. I, you know, I forget the exact, you know, cap table, you know, the owners of this of this company. But every everybody was either a crypto Trump insider insider.

So they own it. And of course, it’s being led by by Trump’s view. The cost to join this club is a half a million dollars.

That’s that’s the entry ticket. And it’s basically, you know, I don’t know. So it’s like a restaurant.

You know, you go for lunch, you go have a drink. I’m not sure if they have like some tennis courts in the back or a gym or something. I’m not really sure, like what you get for your five hundred grand.

And I’m not even sure what the dues are, because I’m sure it’s five hundred thousand to join. And then you probably have to pay, you know, a monthly monthly bill. But what they’re saying, the way they’re advertising this is, hey, this is a way to get access to the Trump cabinet because the cabinet members.

Well, they’re going to hang out at this club. Right. Maybe they get complimentary membership.

So they’re going to be there having drinks, having a meal. And so if you want to socialize with these cabinet members, well, just pay the president’s son a half a million bucks. And there you go.

Now, what do you think people are going to want to talk to these cabinet members about who paid five hundred thousand dollars to sit at that bar? What do you think? They just want to talk sports. Of course not. They’re going to be talking about special breaks, maybe tariff exemptions.

That’s what the president really has to hand out. You put tariffs on everybody and then you just give exemptions to the people that, you know, you know, curry favor with you. And one way to do that is, well, you want to talk about a tariff exemption.

We do all those discussions at the executive branch club. So pay five hundred thousand dollars to the president’s son and you’ll be able to get a seat at the table where you can buy drinks for cabinet members and whatever. And you might end up with a tariff exemption.

Look, this whole thing stinks and nobody is talking about it, especially after the Bidens and what happened with Hunter Biden, you know, selling his father’s influence. You know, at least Hunter, you know, did it with shell companies. Right.

He he at least laundered the money, you know, honestly, maybe honestly is not the best word, but he at least tried to hide what he was doing. Right. But Don Trump, Jr., I know he’s just brazen.

I mean, think of talk about Chutzpah to just do it way out in the open. Like, you know, hey, I’m not going to hide what we’re doing. I’m just going to set up a club where you get access to the cabinet and you pay me five hundred thousand dollars.

This is the second most expensive club in America. The most expensive club is, you guessed it, Mar-a-Lago. And Trump increased the cost of Mar-a-Lago.

It was seven hundred fifty thousand to join. And after he won the election, it became a million dollars. Right.

Why do people pay a million dollars to join Mar-a-Lago? Well, maybe I get a chance to talk to Donald Trump about a tariff exemption or whatever I need. I just I’m going to pay this exorbitant membership fee because it’s so out of whack, you know, I guess with other clubs, what you pay to join. But now this club owned by Trump’s son is the second most expensive club.

But the fact that it’s specifically it’s in Washington, D.C., right, that’s where all these lobbyists are. I mean, I guess now if you want to talk to somebody in the government and you’re a lobbyist and they’re going to say, well, we do all of our meetings at the executive branch. So if you want to meet me for a cocktail, if you want to meet me for a drink, you’ve got to be a member of that club.

Oh, OK, well, how do I become a member? Well, write a check for five hundred thousand dollars to Donald Trump’s son right now. I don’t know if they have to kick anything up to the big guy. Right.

I mean, but I mean, does anybody not see this? I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t watched too much on, you know, the left leaning channels, CNN, MSNBC, CBS. If they’re beating up Trump, I have it.

I have no idea. I mean, they should. But I’m sure that the conservatives on Fox News or anywhere else.

I mean, they’re probably not even touching this story, but I don’t like hypocrisy in any sense. I mean, just like, look, the jobs numbers that we got today. I said they were B.S. when Biden was president.

And I still think they’re B.S. when Trump is president. I’m not like, oh, it’s great when Trump’s president and it’s bad when Biden is. But that’s that’s not being honest.

Right. That’s just that’s spin. Well, if you were against Hunter Biden and I might talk about the other shit that he did with the hookers and the drugs, you know, I have no idea.

I don’t think the Trump kids, they seem like they’re pretty clean cut to me. So I don’t think they’re doing any of that. But if you want to look at the fact that what was Hunter Biden doing? He was selling access to his father, who was the vice president, didn’t even have nearly as much power as the president.

Right. I mean, what the hell is the vice president do anyway? Right. Barack Obama was in charge.

He was just a VP. And, you know, he was trying to sell access, you know, or maybe he was he was doing art. Right.

He painted crap. And somebody would buy his art. Like, why did somebody buy, you know, an original Hunter Biden? Not because it was a beautiful work of art, but because, hey, if I buy this art from Hunter, he’ll do me a favor.

He’ll introduce me to the big guy. Right. So I can’t pay a bribe.

Right. I can’t say, hey, let me give you one hundred thousand dollars. And you set up a meeting with your dad or, you know, you pass this message or I can’t do that.

But I can say, oh, I love that painting. Let me give you one hundred grand for that painting. Oh, thank you.

Yeah. Oh, OK. Oh, by the way.

Hey, you know, can you mind passing along this message to your dad? You know, OK, sure. Right. I’m not paying for the message.

I’m paying for the art. But, you know, obviously the art’s worthless. I mean, I don’t think Hunter was any kind of great artist.

Right. What he had to sell was not art, was access to his father. Well, how is that different from what Don Jr. is doing? I mean, would people pay five hundred thousand dollars to join this lunch club, this bar? Like you think there’s a shortage of places to have have a meal in Washington, D.C.? That town is full of bars.

Right. I mean, the congressman. I mean, that’s why they love being in Washington, D.C. It’s full of bars.

They got young girls, all these interns. It’s a party town and there’s colleges there. Right.

There’s no shortage of restaurants and bars. They are living it up in Washington, D.C. Who the hell needs to pay five hundred thousand dollars to be a member of the executive branch club? If this wasn’t Donald Trump’s kids and if they weren’t saying my father’s entire cabinet is going to be hanging out there, if you want to shoot the shit, there’s no way they can get this money. So they are playing off their father’s name.

They are profiting off it. I just it stinks. I don’t like it.

You know, they shouldn’t do it. I mean, I mean, I think all this stuff should be illegal because there isn’t a emoluments clause. The Constitution.

I remember the first time they were like kind of giving Trump shit about people staying in his hotels. Like, hey, somebody might stay at your hotel and that might be some kind of bribe. Well, this is way worse than that.

Five hundred thousand dollars to join a club so that you can schmooze with the cabinet. Right. And so, I mean, it’s just it’s just so out in the open.

It’s just so ridiculous that somebody other than me has need to call this out because it’s going to be a big stain. And it looks like, look, they’re just trying to cash in, just like the meme coins, the Trump coin, the Melania coin. Right.

And now the executive club. Right. We have some serious problems in this country that need to be solved.

And the Trump family should be using the opportunity they have. Right. To really try to solve these problems, not cash in.

They’re already rich. I mean, how rich do they have to be? Right. How many yachts can they water ski behind that? They really had to come up with the executive branch club.

You know, I was president and my kid wanted to do that. I said, no way you’re not going to do. I wouldn’t even let him.

I would be embarrassed to let my kid do something like this. Even if it isn’t illegal, it doesn’t pass the smell test. Anyway, that’s it for today’s podcast.

If you enjoyed it, don’t forget to give me a like and give me a thumbs up again. If you haven’t signed up for our free newsletter at Schiff Sovereign, make sure and sign up at Schiff Sovereign dot com and look out for that. That email from Schiff Gold.

And that’s it. I guess that’s it. Have a great weekend.

You know, we got the the Kentucky Derby tomorrow. And I went to I went to that horse race once in my life. I mean, I’m going to go back again.

I keep meeting, too, but I just, you know, never seem to have the time. But I had a good time. Derby week.

I was there one time years ago. It was the year that Big Brown won and he had he had already won. And then he went out to run the Preakness.

But I went and saw him. I went and saw him run at at the last race of the Belmont Stakes. And then he lost.

He has some. In fact, I don’t even think I forget if he even finished. He had some kind of injury, but he could have won this triple crown.

So I don’t normally go. But since I had gone to the Derby and he had now he had won two out of three. I went to Belmont because there I could drive because it’s not that far from my house in Connecticut.

So we went to New York to watch that one. But that’s, you know, the last time I went. But I got a couple of parties here, Puerto Rico, that we’re going to go to.

So hopefully everybody enjoys that. And I’ll be back again next week with more. Peter Schiff, so podcast.

So bye for now.