Schiff on France 24: Trump Shoots Americans in the Foot

Earlier this week, Peter appeared on international news channel France 24 to discuss President Trump’s latest protectionist moves. Peter warns that the administration’s tariff push is doing real damage at home while exposing deeper fiscal and monetary fractures. He connects the tariff fight to battles over the Fed and a growing flight into gold and silver as investors flee the weakening dollar. 

He starts with a plain point about who actually pays tariffs — it’s domestic consumers, not foreign governments, who take the hit:

So when it comes to tariffs, the US is not hitting Europe with tariffs. The US is hitting Americans with tariffs. Americans who buy European goods will now have to pay higher tariffs to buy them. Now, yes, that does make it more difficult for European companies, certain companies to sell their goods in the United States because they’re now more expensive and so fewer Americans can afford to buy them. But the loss is for the Americans, not for the Europeans.

From there Peter widens the lens to show that tariffs are only one symptom of bigger structural problems — and that markets are already reacting to those problems in predictable ways: