GOLD: Tariffs Are An Excuse, Price Rallye To $3,000 NOW! (Uncut) 02-04-2025

GOLD: Tariffs Are An Excuse, Price Rallye To $3,000 NOW! | Francis Hunt

A small point that everybody needs to understand. It’s a debt-based system. It’s common that people say FX trades even bigger than the debt markets, which is even bigger than stock markets.

So everybody thinks currencies rules. Actually, you borrow money into existence. It’s the bottom layer of this pyramid of this financial debt system.

And when the debt markets collapse, the currencies get affected by this. So debt contagion to the downside, loss of value is going to cause FX contagion because debt is the foundational layer. We are in a debt-based system.

Hello and welcome to Soar Financially, a channel where we discuss the macro to understand the micro. My name is Guy Hoffman. I’m the Edge AR Mining guy over on X and of course, your host of this channel.

And I’m looking forward to this discussion with Francis Hunt. He’s the market sniper. We’ve had him on this channel a number of times, but today is going to be extremely timely.

We’re going to talk about the US tariffs that they’ve just announced over the weekend, especially on Canada, Mexico, and China. 25% on pretty much anything that comes out of the NAFTA partner countries and an extra 10% tariff on China. I want to dissect this with Francis a bit.

There’s lots going on. We need to talk impact on the US dollar, impact on the metals in particular, and what does it really mean? What’s the whole purpose of this? So, Francis has got some interesting thoughts on this, and I’m looking forward to dissecting this topic with him. Before I switch over to my guest though, here’s a way to support our channel for free.

It doesn’t cost you a thing. Hit that like and subscribe button. It helps us out tremendously and we do appreciate it.

Thank you so much. And now, let’s jump into the discussion with Francis here. Francis, it is good to have you back on the program.

It’s February 2nd or 3rd so it’s tough to say it, but I haven’t seen you yet. All the best for 2025 and I really hope you started it off well. I have and thank you for having me back.

Yeah, really. I watched your channel this morning just preparing for our conversation. You had such a timely monologue rant on your program this morning.

I think you were coming back from your morning swim. We need to dissect what you’ve discussed. There’s lots in there.

Lots happened over the weekend. Maybe let’s start with a very general question. Let’s explain the Trump tariffs.

What do they mean? And then we’ll jump into some of the micro topics here, Francis. Yes, so there’s a lot of spin and the notion of Trump doing tariffs against other nations as being a gift to his own people is a bit of a false construct in the first place. A lot of people might be tempted to go USA, USA, we’ll show China and then we’ll show Mexico and Canada for allowing those drugs coming in, those immigrants or whatever the case may be, as if you’re standing up and fighting for yourself.

What people need to understand is essentially Walmart, large percentage of Amazon is imported goods from China. So the minute you put a 10% on that, the Chinese aren’t going to start making their goods for nothing or going to say, sure, take it out of our margins. We don’t care.

What’s probably going to end up happening, they might allow a tiny bit of margin compression because the US is a big buyer. You wouldn’t want to lose it. But there’s nobody else as a workshop that could provide the volume and scale of goods.

Good luck with finding new sources for everything currently China made. That’s not a that’s not a solution you fix very, very quickly in volume without having major shortages as well. So there’s a mutually dependent relationship as workshop of the world and largest consumer of the world that’s very difficult for each to replace.

So what ends up happening is that those costs will be passed on largely. I won’t say absolutely to the cent, because as I’ve mentioned, China might take some of it on the chin. They might not.

Nobody works for free. So you’re going to have a net inflation. And we’ve got to remember, if you’re talking Walmart, that also hits the low end and the mid end of the consumer.

Doesn’t it affect the billionaires near as much. So inflation is going to get entrenched in the USA as a result of this. Also, when you talk Mexico and Canada, here’s my quick top of the line, quick thoughts on all of that.

A, the percentage is higher, probably because the goods are less. It’s important to remember there was China was doing a lot of shoring in Mexico. And whilst dollar bulls made a big nationalist point about how strong the dollar is being relative to the one, the Mexican peso was actually for four years outperforming the dollar immensely.

That’s not because it’s a great, excuse me, economy per se, but a lot of production was being put into Mexico by China. And in fact, even a company like BMW assembles the three series that gets sold into America, because hiring American workers is more expensive, there’s less flexible labor laws, etc., etc. So the Mexico just making this just about Mexico also doesn’t tell the fullness of the story.

There’s been production facilities set up by multinational corporations from different nations. In short, that will hurt Europe or German cars in the example I gave as well, quite extensively. What else does it achieve? It’s caused an immediate effect of currency compression in the peso and the loonie.

And this essentially means they are getting inflation, because anything they import now will cost more in their local currency. Their cost of living goes up in both Mexico and in more specifically Canada, which has been one of our picks for weakness, along with the Aussie. And our favorite is, of course, the Korean one.

I worry if there’s ever anything that comes of a tariff-related nature. There’s something coming for South Korea, by the way. I’ll just leave that out there.

It’s not part of this discussion. Anyway, so net inflation effects on everybody is to be affected in terms of the three nations mentioned, and China the fourth out there is going to be across the board. What that typically means, less disposable income, likelihood of higher rate increases.

And as I say in all my discussions that I typically start, everything is about the debt problem. This is debt debasement. They need debt debasement.

They need a reason to have to be forced to turn rates around, because rates going up is debt valuations going down. And debt valuations have to go down. If we have a rate spike, you will have a dollar spike.

It’s the only currency which will get that benefit on collapsing debt. Everybody else’s collapsing debt will actually be contagion to the downside their currency. So there’s that unique relationship that you’re have FX based collapse on debt.

And one small and I’m going to leave it after this point, because I’ve said a lot already. One small point that everybody needs to understand. It’s a debt based system.

It’s common that people say FX trades even bigger than the debt markets, which is even bigger than stock markets. So everybody thinks currencies rules. Actually, you borrow money into existence.

It’s the bottom layer of this pyramid of this financial debt system. And when the debt markets collapse, the currencies get affected by this. So debt contagion to the downside, loss of value is going to cause FX contagion because debt is the foundational layer.

We are in a debt based system. And that sometimes confuses people. They get sucked into the concurrency’s narrative.

So currencies will be responding relative to interest rates. And who’s losing debt faster? The dominance of the dollar has actually seen the debt since our turning call, which we’ve mentioned to you on this channel before in 2020, August of 2020, that was the turn of a 40 year bull. And we said escalator up, elevator down has since broadly around 50, 50 to 55 percent.

You’ve had debt based losses, which ceases to see it as a reserve asset in the 60 40 portfolio because the yields are insufficient, well below the true inflation rate and the capital loss instead of being a stable asset has been fast in the last four years. And that’s where gold comes in. But I’m going to hand back to you before I go into that.

Yeah, no, for instance, there’s a lot to unpack in there. And of course, lots to follow up on. And maybe we’ll start with a number one question I’ve been discussing here on this channel as well.

Like how are tariffs inflationary? Is it a one time effect or do you see that happening over time? Is that a constant? And also, like, when do you see that taking hold in the system? Like what’s the lag effect here, Francis? So we’re going to get a second bout of inflation, which will surpass the previous is my inherent prediction. It was, by the way, my prediction when the first wave came and you will even get a third. But the next wave will go beyond.

So I expect interest rates to go far higher. This is going to contagion into real estate. So you’re asking tariffs.

How long does it last? Is it just a once off step? And the problem is once you do that, it has a recessionary effect, which causes a degree of disinflation. And so you’re bankrupt which are already high in the U.S. and probably I don’t have stats on Canada and Mexico, but I suspect on the high side because the economies are not as good as they tell you they are. Actually, man in the street is in contagion.

You have a sort of twisted balloon to economies, pharmaceutical, military, industrial complex, tech surveillance complex, all getting pumped with government based money and contracts super big. The rest is actually suffering a lot more, especially when you talk about SMEs or commercial property or anything like that. So I think, yes, you will have a large step effect.

But unfortunately, there’s knock on effects in that as businesses go bust, you’re going to have more welfare, you’re going to have a greater need for printing and support. If they hold off that, you’re going to get into an accelerating recession that could go deeply disorderly. So they might be tempted to print and that causes knock on effects all the way through.

Of course, you get worse balance of payments and trade situation because you get more people on welfare and less people paying tax. So you get just at the point you need at least your income statement changes as a government. So you get less earnings, et cetera, et cetera.

Very bad knock on effects, which is probably going to lead to the usual cures, quantitative easing and a more holistic, I think, and broad collapse this time, which is going to be depressionary and pretty Western, global, but particularly bad in the West. Yeah, no, absolutely. There’s so much going on that we still need to understand here.

And you mentioned something like rates going down, and you’re talking interest rates or FED’s funds rates. But when we said inflationary environment, shouldn’t the interest rate go higher just to combat that? And of course, that’s sort of against what we need in the US is lower rates, as you said, like the debt is getting like unpayable, pretty much like, like, how do you counterbalance it? Like, it sounds like, yeah, we buy into rates going higher, not going down on the basis of the active need to devalue a market that can’t be sustained at its current valuation. Sorry, I just want to correct you.

And that has been our bias for four years. Okay. Exactly.

It seems like but the Fed wants to lower rates, like, like they have a mandate, more or less to keep inflation in the economy, meaning job market imbalance. What we’re just discussing sounds like there will be a collapse on the job market. We’ll get some BIS revision BIS BLS revisions.

You know, this month in February, sometime I don’t have the exact date in front of me, but we’ll get some revisions and other commentators on this channel mentioned, that’ll be a surprise to the downside, meaning we’ve actually lost a lot of jobs last year, like we’ve seen in I think it was in August, we’ve seen that big revision as well. So the Fed mandate, like, they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. And I feel almost bad for Jerome Powell right now, because the guy, like, impossible job to manage, like, how do you think they will react? Like, what’s the way forward here? So the Fed will want to do what it thinks it can do.

And until the free market intervenes and does what is needed. And everybody has always suffered under the delusion that the Fed is all seeing and all stating, like, God, it states what the interest rate will be. Eventually, when you get to the degree that we’re at now, where you’ve already had debt markets show their volatility and are no longer on a volatility adjusted basis, a proper reserve asset, because they don’t give you high performance like equities do.

You’re looking at the substitution and we need to bring gold into this now. There’s a lot to discuss there. The substitution of debt to gold.

And we are actually seeing the undermining. In the old days, portfolios were a third gold. You know, there’s the legacy Italian families that were third gold, third real estate, third equities.

You know, bonds didn’t make up a large part of that. And the financialization of everything post-Folker actually saw gold quietly be slipped out of all portfolios because there was no risk. We’ve gone free float.

We’ve run that full runway now over the 40 years. And you get that chance when you push rates super high, as Folker did, to manage down the value of the Vietnam debt, where the combination of LBJ and Nixon had overspent, more munitions dropped than in all of World War II. But it was somewhere far away and we never saw it happen.

But the other nations started calling for their gold. We’re having a macro, bigger version of that now. And that’s why I think certain people are applying the law of possession is nine tenths of the law.

And I want to bring in this. You had 393 tonnes of gold leave the UK to support, I think, America. And it’s got nothing to do with taxes.

They want you to think this is about tariffs. So I want to just deal with this other misnomer. Oh, it’s happened because tariffs.

They’re trying to hide a lot of things under the catch all excuse. There is no way as a Basel I reserve asset that any government is going to make it difficult for their borders to receive such an asset because they’re all over indebted. Here’s something that’s going up in value that is accepted across all banks, central banks as a tier one asset and is the only proven mega generational inflationary hedge that cannot be fraudulently acquired or manipulated in any way.

You own it. You’ve got it. And this is why I think America is having a run on gold behind the doors.

They are putting it under the catch all of the volatility of the tariffs because that’s also come about. And in actual fact, to stay whole in terms of those that are actually asking or calling and no longer trusting counterparties to hold gold, the British as a special relationship are shoring up America potentially. And that is why gold is coming in.

And that gold is not being tariffed. And even though the announcement now is subsequent to that, any new gold coming is not tariffed. It’s not going to be treated as product and service.

So I think that’s a lie. It’s a misnomer to hide an inconvenient narrative of a nation needing shoring up in the precious metals department. And I think when the whole thing blows up, you’re going to find out that the US doesn’t have the metals in their name unencumbered or unhypothecated elsewhere that they claim to have and that the flight from metals from the West to the East is far, far beyond your most of our understanding.

And we’re going to be in a state of shock and horror when the curtain is fully pulled back. And we’re seeing the last moments of that that’s currently in play. So I think that’s a huge story that needs to be discussed more and shouldn’t be parked under the tariff umbrella in the catch all way that it is.

Yeah, let’s discuss that a bit more since we’re on that topic. And we’ll get back to tariffs here in a minute, Francis. But let’s dissect that.

There’s a premium already being paid for gold and silver on the COMEX. London is being drained. The LME, JP Morgan, just on Bloomberg article, JP Morgan is shipping another $4 billion worth of gold to the US.

There’s some interesting speculation, of course. And you sort of mentioned it as well. Is it really under the umbrella of tariffs or are they trying to hide something else, meaning short covering? That’s my take.

You summarized it. And as I say, you’re not. I mean, if you come to live in my house and you’re bringing your gold, am I going to make it expensive and hard for you to do, especially in times of financial crisis, and you’re going to become a lodger in my home? I’m delighted to have wealth within my borders.

And what’s actually going to happen in my personal aspect is it’s going to become far harder to move metals cross-border and out of the US. And people should watch for that. So it’s going to be plenty easy to get it in.

Try getting it out. And other nation states. So I’m not Americanizing this.

It’s going to be a thing. And everybody’s going to be very conscious. And I also want to forewarn that China has been ahead of most games in all these things and has been not only mining the largest miner, they’ve been the biggest importer going through Hong Kong, Beijing.

They’ve also been the biggest black market player in Africa. I’ve experienced this personally in Zimbabwe in subsistence mining. It goes to the Middle East, gets malted and it gets sent there.

So they have been hoarding and they’ve been telling their citizens, buy the gold on the basis that it’s in border and there’s a discount window and everybody should be exploiting it. And that’s the payback for sitting in debt that is devaluing. So they need to maximize that discount border because they are aware they can’t sell their, let’s say it’s, I don’t know what it is exactly anymore because they’ve lost so much value on it, but approximately a trillion, let’s say, either a little bit below, a little bit above of US debt.

They know they’re sitting with a rotten apple in there. So they’ve got to stack the other basket to counterbalance that. And the discount window is it.

And the good thing about the desk base collapse, there’s this beautiful Demartini type thing of night and day. We’ve had a manipulated metals market in my view, particularly silver, but also in gold. The unleashing of the loss of value in debt as that debt market goes down will be the freeing up and the forced price discovery mechanism in gold, because you’re going to have this 40 year fraud that ran from 18 percent and they got the Saudi petro deal provided, you know, price in oil, price in dollars, recirculate your money into bonds, creating a natural buyer.

That isn’t there anymore to the same degree. They’ve created so much debt. And there is another key point that isn’t being mentioned, an absolute wall of rollovers spanning seven trillion in this year alone on top of the excess spending.

And when we look at charts, basically the deficit spending in some instances was double the income last year and over the four years of Democrats, in fact. And Yellen and others have said we handed you a beautiful economy. It’s a bit like me saying you earn 100 K, but here’s a credit card, spend an extra two hundred and fifty grand and show me how well you live.

And you show me how well you live and you say, you see, he’s having a great life. And then the next year you now need to pay that all back. And that’s come on the first year of the new president, which which I think is by design.

They knew there would be a pivot into the CBDCs, the digital ID, which comes in on a right wing government. So that’s me joining up my dots. I think that’s what’s coming.

And I think he gets the reset. I’ve often said they like the economic crashes on the centre right candidates rather than the left wing ones. And I think this is this is the beginning of some big shoes dropping right here.

Yeah, no, absolutely. There’s there’s lots going on. We’ve got to watch this very carefully, like as we’ve discussed before, Francis, a crash could ring in the CBDC century.

I think Europe is almost ready for it. The US is lagging behind. Scott Besson has pumped the brakes on that topic.

So it’ll be interesting to see how that evolves. I want to stay on gold for a second because or the precious metals in general, like including silver here. China has an export ban on precious metals.

Will we see something similar from the western countries? Will the USA no more exporting? Will the UK say no more exporting? The LMEs getting drained? Maybe the COMEX will say it’s like, OK, we can’t export anymore just for like what you call a national security reasons, perhaps, right? Maybe that’s the number one reason you can always cite and people will agree with it. Is that something you could see happening? For me, the short answer is absolutely yes. I mean, it’s kind of like everybody’s been playing musical chairs and the lights are suddenly going to switch on or, you know, they’ve been at the ball.

The lights come on. That’s the girl you’re going home with. That’s the gold you got.

That’s the gold you’ve got. You’ve had the Eastern Europeans really stacking because they’re ex-communist nations and they were unders. There’s almost a freedom of information request that keeps getting blocked about is there an official policy in Europe about getting their gold percentage to GDP? And they’re all looking for an absolute minimum of 4 percent.

The Polish have spoken of 20 percent. So there is. We’ve gone from central bankers being suppressionist and selling the Brown’s bottom, which was the UK head that sold 400 tons at the 250 dollar mark on behalf of the British people.

They should all be thanking that Labour chancellor and subsequent PM for that. I’ll trade. I bet the name on the on that clipboard changed and they’re doing just dandy because it’s more than 10 X and it’s going for a target of about two thousand nine hundred.

And I’d love to show you any charts if you want me to take you there. But I’ll let you just unpack that response. Yeah.

No, we can jump into the charts here right here, because I want to talk to you the market market reactions to the whole tariff debate, because it is quite interesting because the US dollar is shooting up. We’re up about a percent. One on nine point two, roughly on the Dixie, but also gold marking all time highs over the weekend, right around twenty eight hundred dollars right now.

So it retreated just a little bit. But they’re strong in unison, which is a bit surprising because gold went up higher because the Dixie or the dollar dropped in recent weeks. So really curious what your charts are going to tell us here, Francis, and what your perspective is here.

Yes. So I’ll make a couple of interesting points that I keep making. And I really want people to recognize.

But let’s just first, how’s gold looking? So post, this is an HVF setup. So this is something we specialize. It’s our community.

And we we actually actively trade this. So we are leveraged long gold throughout what is actually turning out a crisis, but it’s turned very beneficial for gold. And we’re expecting the two thousand nine hundred level.

You’ll see a target of two eight, nine, seven. We also have a much bigger time frame, a bull flag. That’s also here.

You’ll see two purple lines. Purple are what we use for our targets there. One is this current setup on a smaller time frame, the daily, and the other one is a much larger one on a weekly.

We’re getting a confluence of targets here. So everyone’s going to get super bullish gold. And I’m going to actually step out and call a localized high around the three grand mark as we run this.

Why? And will it go higher? Yes, in time. But I think other things are going to come into play that are going to potentially put a little bit of a short term, maybe medium term stop on the markets. They don’t go up in straight lines.

That said, we see six thousand eight hundred seven and off on bigger time frames. There are more technical targets. But when you reach a confluence, that’s two patterns that give you the same level.

I never ignore that fact. So we are net long. This was a little bit of a shooting star on Friday.

So this is the daily time frame. And then you trade it down with all the drama of tariffs that are being spoken about. And you’ve shrugged it off and you’ve come back up to give a hammer.

This is just turns into a range defining move. There’s your shooting star. You were knocked back.

People were expected a bit of risk off with the tariff narrative. Some of the insiders on Friday. You’ve got to say there must be insiders.

By the way, that’s at our second interim level where we expect a little bit of pullback action. So there’s a pause that goes all the way down here, which was around two thousand seven hundred and seventy and all the way back up a hammer. So what’s actually happened is you’ve ridden the pullback and you’ve been rejected.

The demand for gold hasn’t gone away. Now, if I just highlight from the very highest point over the last two days to where we are now, and I’m going to make a point about Bitcoin and crypto markets as well in this. If we just go get the measuring tool, how badly are we off the most recent high? By the way, this is the most recent high against all currencies.

So at its worst point in this crisis of tariffs, you sold off one point five nine percent. And in the same day, you already back up your only nought point five four percent off your current all time high, which was recently created and is across nearly every single currency that is at an all time high. Now, I’m going to do the same thing with Bitcoin just to bring some perspective why gold is your stability is noble money and everything else is a pretender to me, albeit playing some role and having higher alpha to the upside.

It’s how well your money does when you need it most during the bad times that counts most. So if I just pivot this to the daily and we do a like for like comparison, nought point five four percent is how much you are down in the last few days. And in fact, the last week, it’s not like for like if I say the last week, but from your high in Bitcoin, you’ve actually gone as low.

You’ve lost 16 percent from your all time high at about 109 down to the 91. And at the moment you are from your all time down 95. And if we just take the same two days as I did for gold, at one point you were down almost 10 percent and you are down six percent in just the two days.

Now, I think it’s going to find support here, but it’s just an interesting argument that doesn’t get discussed. You’re going to need your money most when everyone else needs it. When the power, the grid goes down, the new recession comes in whatever form, depression, that’s when you’re going to need to sell the low beta to the downside is the gift.

How much you once were at a high watermark when it was pumpamentals is actually of less relevance. How hard is your downside beta as well? So while we talk gold, that’s respected. Two thousand nine hundred big target.

Where did the other two thousand nine hundred target come from? Just to finish this segue that I’m giving you on the gold price came all the way from here. And from this continuation pattern we had here. So we had a big uplink from there to there.

It’s a big, big sorry, it’s down here. You’ll see it down there. Let me pull a little bit more history in.

We had a lengthy continuation pattern where two K was the ceiling. We kept getting rejected at two K, rejected at two K. We said once, twice, three times a lady. You break it on the fourth time, which you did.

You had a setback as support. That was our leverage long moment that said that will be a great long to hold for an extended period. You’re getting a final one.

And then I think we need to step back. There could be something coming and that could be a very, very disproportionate dollar spike that occurs that even takes for a temporary period the steam out of gold’s sales once all this gold has been repropriated. So watch, watch what’s happening.

We could go demand destroying events after two thousand nine hundred. I would be very cautious, cautious, particularly the higher beta assets like Nvidia stocks and crypto when gold hits the two thousand nine hundred. I think we rest.

There’s one other alternative. It could have a blow off and finish the three K. But I will point out every time we’ve come close to a thousand mark, we get rejected. So in 2011, we came to 1927 and were stopped before running it.

And it was very similar on the thousand mark. So typically when you’re making a new thousand, they really don’t like that. The central bankers, they’ll do everything in their power.

So a little bit of a cautionary call. Two thousand nine hundred. All leverage longs for me are off.

Investment stays on. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we come off for a bit. Despite the hypothecation and everything else, they still have a lot of power.

We don’t want to count them out too soon. Now, really, really interesting insights here, Francis. And let me bring you this back on here.

But just on the Bitcoin chart real quick, just a quick follow up. I don’t want to dive too deep on Bitcoin, but just a correlation with the tech stocks and the tech market. As of last week, we’ve seen Nvidia crash 17 percent.

Did you see that correlation in the Bitcoin chart as well? And how much of that is tariff trade versus tech trade? People, we should also mention the other story that didn’t get mentioned near as much. That just that’s answering this question as well, Kai. And that’s got to do with the DeepSeek and the Quake 2.5, which was another shock and awe revelation.

There are a lot of people. I love Americans. I love American people.

It’s a beautiful country. I visit. I have a great time.

It’s awesome. The government and the unsound money principles, I don’t project on the individual people of the country. We know we’re in a captured situation here.

But I have I have to say there’s a nationalism that says we’re the least dirty shirt in the laundry. There’s this typical saying that brushed me up wrong. And I say it’s not accurate.

It’s not accurate at all. You just happen to be the biggest dirtiest that you can’t go through the normal washing machines. You’re going to go last through an industrial scale one.

You’re not the cleanest. You’re not anything. And people say, look at China, look at China.

It’s China knocking. And that’s a Pan-American type mentality. I see it in the dollar milkshake guys and other people trying to ban all of this.

China superseded AI and the cost that Altman wanted to raise money for for his other AI on a pittance. And then they put two champions for not just one. And they’re as powerful, if not more.

And this suddenly is pulling back the curtain on the only place that can generate unicorns is a Californian garage or dorm in the form of Facebook. I’m afraid that’s a complete misnomer in line. People say, oh, they steal from us to steal.

Maybe they did. And maybe you’ve stolen from them. But one thing is sure, they ain’t stupid and they’ll make things better and faster and quicker.

And and they’ve got more physicists, more coders, harder working. They are going to they claim to win and they’re playing the long term. And look, this is not a pro communism statement.

This is just what I see. The Pan-American nationalism, we’re still the greatest. It’s only in America that we can do these things and all of that.

There’s a lot of balloon juice, unfortunately, in that America has scale and has a major venture capital industry which has been made at the chosen place on a transnational basis to launch these unicorns. But it’s not the only nation with scale. China has scale.

China has hard workers. And we’re finding out that there’s a little bit of a swing back and there’s less China bad narratives. So in terms of I want to take it back to your question, because I think your question just remind me again, the take on this because there was a tie up and I’ve lost my train of thought.

No, it’s AI tech stocks versus Bitcoin and tariff discussion. Thank you. So so I think actually, the current narrative that I was just describing has has been damaging more in terms of tech and treating Bitcoin as a tech liquidity proxy.

I think that’s been more damaging. The general tariff is a risk off vibe that is also generally bad, but it’s not specifically bad. While the OpenSeek Quake 2.5 innovation was very specifically, there’s a lot of AI tokens, don’t forget, as well in the crypto space.

All of these things that are supporting fancy valuations suddenly get a lot harder look. And the tech companies in the Nasdaq that are hyper valued and actually are benefiting from the collapse of debt. The money doesn’t know where to run.

So it’s run into tech stocks and you have hyper valuations when both those reverse and some of it might bleed back into debt on the old Pavlovian fear response. I see gold being the primary beneficiary in truth because people are going to not think about return on capital. They’re going to think return of capital and gold is a surety.

You hold it. It’s yours. Yeah, no, for instance, we’re discussing all this before market open on Monday, of course, my US market open, I have to say.

And the reactions in the market are quite interesting. I’m just looking at it again, like the US bond. The bond yields are down, down to four point five percent on the 10 year.

Gold is up around twenty eight or seven as we speak. The Dixie is at one oh nine. Let me get the latest here because I think it’s up again since earlier in our discussion.

Yeah, one oh one one oh nine point one six, roughly nothing too crazy. But I’m trying to sort of put it into context because the S&P 500, for example, is down. And you just mentioned one buzzword we might come back to, and that’s the risk off trade.

Is that what we’re seeing right now? People fleeing into bonds, fleeing into the US dollar and fleeing into gold as perceived safe haven investments. Is that how I can interpret the market action today? I would say there’s a lot of curtains being pulled back on legacy perceptions, the preeminence of all things tech only being American. You’re having a curtain pull back on that.

And it’s scaring a lot of the valuations, the preeminence of the need for America to actually requisition gold from the, you know, tied at the hip ally. Britain shows that there’s distress in the markets. It’s not a tariff related issue for the reasons I’ve already discussed.

So what’s actually happening is America as preeminent stock market and safety and growth is being challenged here, both by the tech, the quick and the deep seek, and more generally by its stability in terms of its position in the debt markets currently. So what you’re actually getting is a particular US branded risk off. Yes, there’s contagion in all the markets because it’s such a big fish.

But I think this is the questions are coming home to America. It’s you are hyper valued to your true worth in equity and in debt markets. You’ve got the further, you are the 200 storey building with a long way to fall.

The huts in Africa with barely two storeys, it’s not a big fall for them. The 200 storey building that has climbed to the, you know, to the heavens on valuation in equity markets, the hyper debt markets on the basis that dollar was preeminence, the military might, all of these things. You’ve had a lot of pullback on military might post the withdrawal in Afghanistan under Biden.

The Russian, I would say, slow motion victory over Ukraine, all of these things. So what we’re actually seeing is the stripping of the allure or the aura a king, a fit young physical specimen of a king once had to see a much more old and rusty throne. And I think it’s across many boundaries, technology, debt based, the soundness of the debt base in terms of the financial system and many other things.

So there is a risk off because it’s such a big player, but it’s also got a very U.S. theme. And I don’t think you’re going to get CNBC, Fox News and the likes talking about that near as much as you will hear from me and you. No, absolutely not.

Not in such detail anyway. Like it’s all about the headlines for them and no depth behind it. Right.

So I think we can agree on that. For instance, like one thing we haven’t talked about the tariff discussion and then, you know, I want to move on and talk maybe end game of what this could look like. But on the tariff side, we haven’t talked about potential retaliation.

Mexico has a bit of leverage. The US, the Canada definitely has some leverage. I remember you talking about the lumber market, for example, in your morning discussion here that people can find on your YouTube channel, by the way, which we will link to.

But you mentioned lumber, for example. What kind of levers does Mexico and Canada have to pull and how effective are they? Bernier released a tweet, which was actually quite a sensible tweet. It was a treat and a tweet, I suppose they call posts nowadays.

And he’s kind of more centre right. He’s not the loony tunes of Bolshevik communism that Trudeau was to the same degree. He’s kind of their Trump to a degree.

And he had to admit that when you have tariff wars, the big guy wins. It’s a bit like we no longer cooperating. It’s a fight.

So Canada gets pounded, unfortunately, for them by America. Both get hurt a little bit because Canada can kick and punch itself, but the bigger guy wins out. So the reprisals actually are going to be limited.

If there is a centre right politician who understands this and does economic common sense, he’s and already the tone that he struck in that post was, you know, we need to do more to make sure fentanyl isn’t coming and immigration isn’t coming through our borders to give Trump more of what he wants. There’s nothing to be gained in retaliation. So that is already quite a clear message on tone.

He said, and he actually admitted, you know, we could do the same. They buy much less than we buy. Then we provide much more to them than they provide to us.

In short, we are more reliant on them because we’re the baby brother in this relationship. And that’s so I can’t speak for Mexico, although they’ve got a new president that used to work at BlackRock, a young lady of interesting background. But, you know, I’d imagine it’s I treat all politics as broadly captured.

So I think overall, and I’m glad you brought me back to this topic because I’m going to give you a prediction, Francis Hunt prediction, and everyone can come back and tell me how badly wrong I am in due course. But overall, the way you force a regional trade zone into a kind of EU trade zone beyond the old shaky NAFTA, and you actually make them more tied in, a la the EU, a political EU, is the big guy first beats up the two little guys. You know what, they sign anything after that.

Once you take away their breakfast, their lunch, and you slap them about the face a little bit and push them around and get bolshy and aggressive, what tends to happen is, hey, hey, okay, how do we end this? And already you’re seeing that in the tone. So I as a precursor see a little bit of a mirror type vibes in all of this. And I see a potential economic.

And when you think of the lady that got airdropped in to Mexico, and the center right guy who’s kind of got a bit of a business sense that’s now in Canada, he’s going to have a natural business approach to a businessy Trump who’s throwing his weight around. I can see deals being signed for those eventually disappearing that will get closer to the annexation of Canada, as he was initially speaking, without it being officially an annexation. So I see a bit of EU vibes coming in about this.

And I think this has been planned for an extended way. And the way you do it is the big guy in the room starts pounding everybody else until they all cooperate with him, and he’s now the boss of the region. So that’s a prediction I’m going to throw out there.

I’m not sure if it answered your original question, but everybody suffers out of the tariffs. And that is the case, I turn up the heat, and everybody’s feet get burned. And then you then you agree, let’s stop hurting each other.

And that’s kind of the way these things typically work. It starts a fight to get a deeper peace. Sorry, I do apologize.

I was coughing. So I muted myself. But everybody getting hurt, like I was just saying, like natural gas is something that is up 10% this morning.

That’s something people in North America will feel immediately on their daily or monthly electricity or energy bills here. I’m trying to understand, like maybe… Well, while you have that thought, if I can, because I didn’t fully answer your question. And when you mentioned natural gas, it triggered me.

You asked specifically on lumber a little bit as well. You know, America doesn’t replace a big nation by geography mass, who grows trees for fun, as a lumber supply. So there’s quite a bit of pain that I’m not diminishing that it could be quite a pain.

You know, you try to get Brazil chopping down the Amazon to ship your trees, you’re going to battle to bring it in cheaper. When you’ve got a boat, all that, put it through and swing it around. And obviously, you can’t have tariffs on Brazil either, because then, you know, so it’s going to be tough to actually find a supplier on your doorstep.

So I’m not making that America will have it all its own way out of that. And lumber is a clear example, and they’re big consumers. So it wouldn’t shock me to see volatility in the market, both up and down, because the Canadians might be forced to cut margins on that which could press on the industry to maintain a market share.

But if they’re smart, they should try to hold on pricing and let the shortages give, maybe sanity will prevail. But, you know, people still have payrolls to make. And, you know, we’ve asked this question on silver miners.

Why don’t they just sell enough production just to cover costs and stockpile until there’s better price discovery? And it’s never quite worked. So you’ve got to ask, are the silver miners controlled? And will the lumber guys be bullied into eating some of their margins? Everyone gets short by tariffs, but the US gets the tariff money. And we know governments are the worst expenditures of the money.

So everyone else gets hurt by what’s been taken out. And the worst spender of money gets the money, which could mean more money to Israel, which seems to be the only country that survived. The aid, it could mean other surveillance investments.

I don’t know. But I don’t see government or state as a good utilizer of money. And don’t forget, they’re paying record amounts on interest.

And I’m busy saying to you, the inflation that’s going to cause is going to likely to make that more. So it could be you end up getting tariff money and it all goes on interest payments and you end up with a larger shortfall on account of the rate cycle having to turn as debt continues to devalue and you continue to kill activity. And only a very deep recession can cause a short term respite in the debt markets, where it will potentially go up and rates could drop for a while.

But any kind of cure and we then get second leg rebound on the inflation and interest rate cycle. Trigger so many questions in my head, Francis, like but one thing like before we move too far away on the Canada and Mexico topic, do you see NAFTA being dissolved any day now and being renegotiated, maybe putting a new NAFTA 2.0 into place based on what’s being discussed right now, based on all the pressure that’s being applied? Well, the TA stands for trade agreement. I see something far deeper.

You know, we used to have the EMU, which was the European Monetary Union before we had the EU, I think. And that was more tied in than a trade agreement. A trade agreement is just a trade agreement.

I see something that pulls that larger region far tighter. And we’re actually losing sovereignty. And we’re getting economic blocks.

And I see we retreat into economic blocks, you will have a eurozone, you could, you’re going to have a North American zone, and then you’re going to have the BRICS zone, which could involve, you know, the larger South and a little bit of Latin America, you know, you’ve got South Africa, where I am now, you’ve got Russia, and etc. So I see this retreating into loggers, the allies are being drawn, and some are being bullied to be conscripted into that. And I would put Mexico quite possibly, they would probably like to keep an arm’s distance as an average Mexican, although I’ll not describe their current prime minister stroke president as the average Mexican and representative of their nation either.

But the average Mexican would probably like a peaceful and an arm’s length trade deal with America where they can mutually cooperate and be a safe distance away. I don’t think they’re going to get that. No, absolutely not.

And it is difficult to sort of track what is going on there. We’ll leave it at that on NAFTA, a lot of speculation, still early days on the tariff discussions here. But I mentioned to you, like, I want to discuss the endgame.

And you mentioned in your previous answer, like how inflation will be spiraling out of control. You talked about debt. So my question is, like, is inflation being used to get out of debt? Meaning, like, will we inflate out of debt? And where I’m stuck comprehending this whole scenario right now is that we’re seeing goods inflation, potentially due to the tariffs.

But the question is, like, how will this inflate us out of the debt? Like, how do we make that segue from goods inflation to getting out of that debt inflation? Does that make sense? That question? I’m trying to make sense of the whole scenario here. I’m going to share right now this particular tweet, because you were mentioning the first thing you triggered in there is, well, there was quite a lot in there. But the one thing that’s being mentioned, the endgame, is what you’re asking.

How does this all play out in endgame? This is Maxime Bernier. And this is what he’s saying. And he actually references, and I want to highlight to everybody who’s watching the Fintwits vibe and other media, we are getting far more references to bankruptcy out of Elon.

Trump has mentioned it. And you have Maxime Bernier mentioning it in this tweet. He refers to a pandemic level bailouts in this tweet.

And he also talks about possible Trump’s plan. Now, I don’t think it’s Trump’s plan, because I think there’s higher government on multiple levels beyond him for a reset, enforcing a reset. And this is how I do it.

I will show that he wants to mandate the Bank of Canada to stop printing money. So he’s kind of on a sound money vibe, although he will be captured too. But at least there’s some principles in there.

The sound money vibe, start accumulating a gold reserve, Canada to start accumulating a gold reserve. There was nothing of that nature under Trudeau to prepare for the global monetary reset, which is likely part of Trump’s plan. It’s not part of Trump’s plan.

It’s part of the globalist worldwide transnational cartels plan in my take. But let’s just set the allocation of blame aside here. He’s referring to a global monetary reset in our logo, which we set up 15 years ago.

The Great Reset is one of our circles, crypto, the market sniper trading the markets with HVF method and the reset begin with the end in mind. The reset was always our end in mind. This is what is being orchestrated.

And the overall inflationary effects of tariffs are going to push inflation, push interest rates, collapse debts. And it will be part of what the prime minister or president, prime minister, I think, in Canada is now referring to as a global monetary reset. That’s the politicians now.

It’s no longer the WEF, which is supposed to be this aimless, harmless quango think tank. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in San Francisco. But all that apart, he’s now referring, you’ve got a politician of a nation saying we’re in trouble.

And he’s also saying we can’t win in a war against a bigger guy. So a lot of what I’ve said for people that think Francis is out there, he’s a little bit black pill or he’s too conspiratorial. Just read the tweet.

That’s what that’s what the leader of the nation is saying. And I would I would take it from him in terms of that. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, he’s the leader of the People’s Party of Canada. So definitely somebody who should be tuned in, or at least should be talking to some of the right people in Canadian government or hearing and picking up some of the right things here. People are great to me.

Absolutely. No. So I know volatility is crazy, like the VIX is up 20% today as we speak, which is quite interesting.

It’s not at record levels or anything, whether we’ve seen maybe in August. So the market doesn’t seem too nervous. Yes, there’s some selling that we’re seeing in the futures market.

But like, how do you predict the next maybe let’s keep it short term, actually three months to play out like the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. What else do you expect? Let’s try getting the crystal ball out, rub it a little bit and see where we’re headed here. Francis.

An important point that we’ve thrown so many things out, it’s easy, you know, it’s easy to turn into sand on the beach and people miss the diamonds. The important point is the talk of tariffs and the nation’s effective have all led to currency crashes against the dollar. Mexican peso, Canadian loonie.

And I have to check the Chinese one. I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I would imagine it to be minorly affected. It was already relatively soft against the dollar.

So what this causes is more tariff talk will cause more currency weakness in those effective nations and that weakness being against the dollar strength. So the potential that we’ve suggested and on this side, you know, Brent Johnson’s milkshake theory has a lot of good stuff in it. I don’t like the Pax Americana tweet feed in terms of, you know, we’re winning and at least dirty shirts and China bad and all of that.

That’s a stylistic. But in terms of he’s quite correct in my reading in and pay him credit on his dues that the other nations, if this continues, we get a rolling tariffs. Who else are we attacking? Who else are we bullying? Once you get away with it without reprisals, it’s actually incentive to continue, especially with smaller nations.

I mean, you know, you could bully Greenland into being part of it, put a tariff on them and stuff. You know, I’m not I’m not suggesting that seriously. It’s kind of almost humor.

But they’re bullying people into being with us or against us. This is kind of like George Bush’s simplistic binary world. You know, you’re with us or against us.

There’s black or there’s white. There’s no shades of grey. And this tariff talk will continue to cause currency down valuations in the nations affected, which is likely to not let them cut rates because they’re going to have defend their currency a little bit.

They can’t cut too much. So that’s going to push them into recession as well, potentially in defending their currency. They have to make it attractive to still hold their debt, et cetera, et cetera.

And it’s going to cause unnatural strength in the dollar as well. And the more the dollar goes up without the rates going significantly up, all the nations that have borrowed in dollars now have to print more of their currency to meet their dollar payment on their debt. So I can see the contagion of debt, the rolling dominoes, starting with the most vulnerable in emerging debt.

And one of the best ways for nations to defend themselves against that is gold accumulation, because the one thing that will go up immensely while the debt goes down and the currency goes down will come down to how much have you got in the vault back in Istanbul, Johannesburg, you know, London, Paris, Munich, talk about pop music, you know, all of them, they’ve got to start counting what’s in the vault because it’s going to come down to noble money, not derivatives. This is a great reveal. The tide is going out on a spring tide and you’re going to see a lot of naked, a lot of naked bad asses hanging out.

And that’s going to be a big reveal. Yeah, I think we’re seeing that right now with the gold covering in the U.S. JP Morgan, I mentioned it earlier, shipping more and more gold over back to the U.S. as well to potentially cover their short position. So really interesting.

Francis, I’ve got lots of more topics to discuss with you, but we do have to put a bow around it right now. Francis, super, super insightful. Where can we follow your work? So grab us on the Market Sniper, the YouTube channel and also the X-Profile.

We’re aiming to specialize for this unique economic times where normal IFA advice is actually not designed for on a non-advisory basis, how you should protect your wealth in going through economic case history of centuries. They’ll be talking about what went down here for many, many years if we’re allowed to have true records to reflect that. There is a polarizing outcome.

You either come out of this exceptionally well, which could see you truly, truly actually go up in your wealth, which will be the path of the minority. The path of those that are sleeping through this and just working the daily job are going to be asset stripped, in my opinion. It truly is a polarizing event.

And follow us for more. There’s links in the description in our YouTube channel for engaging further with us. No, fantastic.

Francis, really appreciate your time. As always, great to catch up. Can’t wait to do this again.

As I said, we’ve got lots more to chat about, like even the question is Mexico a proxy for China probably opens a whole different can of worms here and is a deep, deep rabbit hole. So we’ll save that one for next time. But in the meantime, thank you so much, Francis, and we’ll be back with lots more.

Everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Francis Hunt. I’ve tremendously enjoyed it.

Very different, very interesting perspective on things. And it was good to put some perspective around what happened over the weekend. Will the US enhance tariffs against Canada, Mexico? What does that look like? Is NAFTA falling apart? Are we going to see a new NAFTA being agreed upon? Lots and lots of different stories.

How will gold hold up? I find it should have asked Francis actually, is gold going to hold up versus a stronger dollar? And right now it looks like it. Are the other two going up in tandem in the future or in future months here? We’ll have to see. It is an interesting topic of debate.

If you’ve watched till the end, if you leave a comment, leave a like. And as you’ve noticed, I don’t have an afro behind me because I’m back in my home studio. So thanks for the comments on that.

Always appreciate it. And subscribe to the channel. It’s a free way to support us.

Thank you so much. And we’ll be back with lots more. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai