More Spending, More Debts, More War — And A Trade War?
America has massive problems, which can be summed up in two words -- overwhelming government. Despite some impressive exposures from DOGE, our chief problem is being exacerbated. Government spending is increasing, government debt is increasing, President Trump threatens new wars, and now we're in the midst of a trade war. The troops are not coming home, the 1,000 bases are not being closed, and the "foreign aid," is not being eliminated. In order to get rid of overwhelming government, all of these variables have to move in the opposite direction.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, welcome to the program.
Happy Friday.
Great to be with you, Dr. Very good.
Interesting things going on in the world.
We talk a lot about foreign policy, and we might make a mention of that, but what we're really going to talk about is what everybody else is talking about and worried about, and that's the economy.
And what in thunder are these tariffs out of the market for?
Is it going to make everybody happy?
A few people I see on TV said they're all happy.
Well, they're going to help us.
They're going to keep out our competition.
We're going to make a lot of money.
But I tell you what, I don't think there's a strong argument to promote tariffs in general because that's way too much government mischief as far as I'm concerned.
You know, one of the things I've been impressed with this last several days on what was going on was the amazing power that was gravitated and has been in the hands of a president.
You know, they've done a lot of this.
They tinker with tariffs.
The Constitution gives us a certain amount of authority.
But I don't think the founders ever dreamed that one president all by himself, without really consultation with the Congress, you know, issue orders dealing with trillions and trillions of dollars being manipulated in the market to adjust the imbalance in the trade cycle and what's going on.
And also designed to, say, get an advantage over the other countries.
So this to me is utterly amazing.
But the Constitution does give the president that power, and the Congress has a certain amount of power.
But all I can say is it's way overblown.
And if we ever get a chance, which I'm not anticipating, to change the Constitution on this, I would make it much more limited.
If you're going to do this much manipulation in one day or one hour and issue this much authority over the economy, that it ought to be approved by the Congress before it happened.
Let the arguments happen before instead of waiting until afterwards until trillions and trillions of dollars had to shift or be lost in the marketplace.
So it is a real mess out there.
But I do want to mention Birch Gold because Birch Gold we've partnered with for quite a while.
We talk a lot about gold.
And obviously gold today is up and down and it's really dramatically changing as we speak.
And it might be a good time if you're not, if you have not invested in gold, to get in touch with Birch Gold and find out some of their suggestions on how to do it.
Some people would be very upset.
They had some gold and gold price goes down, but that happens.
I started watching this since 1971 and it was $35 or less.
Believe me, gold went up and down all the time.
But it was one of the numbers that I watch when I think, well, is gold going down today or forever?
Because all our assessment about 6,000 years of history on gold is all wrong.
What's going on?
But I don't look at that for the immediate anticipation of what's going to happen in the financial markets, especially in the value of our currency.
And that is to look at what the deficit is doing.
And the deficit is not going away.
Right now, DOGE has not really produced actual deficits.
They've done tremendous work in exposing the waste and the fraud, but that hasn't occurred yet.
And they're still spending money right and left.
So the debt is going to stay there.
I think by watching the debt over these many, many years always indicated to me that they're not going to earn it and pay for and tax people.
They're going to have more and more debt.
Guess what?
$36 trillion, that's a fair amount.
And that has to be dealt with and part of the problems that we have today.
Because when we're able to do that and operate from the reserve currency of the world, you know, there can be distortions, not only in domestic markets with pricing and investment, but also international trade, especially if one country has more control than the other.
And we just happen to have control of the reserve currency, the dollar.
That's to us pretty important.
So we have an edge.
So it's interesting that with our edge and really tremendous power associated with our military power, that we're the ones now saying everybody mistreats us and this is all that's happening, which is true.
We have put up with that and Trump wants to fix it.
But it's so out of proportion to, you know, assuming some of the responsibility by ourselves.
And that is something that if a person takes a look at that and the definitions going up and I think maybe I should get to check in with Birch Gold.
There is a way.
You look at the bottom of the page and you could see that if you text Ron at 989898, you can get in touch with Birch Gold.
And they will send you materials on how you might consider investing in gold or deciding what to do today.
So if you are interested in that, go ahead and text Ron, 989898, because believe me, the value and the interest and the significance of gold is not going away.
Even though gold died sharply, it will go up sharply as well.
And they're not going to change history.
History is that if you spend too much money and you don't pay for it and you print the money, you're going to have inflation.
And then you're going to have corrections with inflation and you're going to have distortion on trade policy.
And then you'll try to correct it with more regulations.
It doesn't work.
So this is an interesting time to try to figure this out.
And there will be a lot of opinions out there on what to do with stocks and bonds and gold and all these different investments that one has.
But we, Chris and I want to talk a little bit more about the specifics of what's going on.
But I've been amazed at how much power the president have.
I know they have way too much power because the Congress gives up on it.
You know, all the regulations ever written, they're not allowed to write regulations.
Those are laws.
The Congress gives them that.
And right now, they're trying to emphasize that these regulations shouldn't be laws and we ought to change it.
But for years and years and years, they end up doing this, just writing regulations.
So it's really very much out of control.
The Congress is supposed to write legislation.
But when it comes to tariffs, the Constitution gives the Congress and the President a fair amount of authority to issue and manipulate with tariffs.
But they didn't say you could do anything you want anytime you want.
It's a good idea that if the bigger it is, the more you can hide and all this nonsense that goes on.
Because I just cannot imagine if the founders were looking at that when they were studying the issue of tariff, that they were going to think that the president himself would have this much power over so much wealth.
So I think someday we'll have to think about when this is improved in the Constitution, that it would be much better off to not grant so much authority to the president and even to Congress without some deliberation on why one's doing it.
This is very, a very big deal.
And, you know, they have always said, and we say that where goods and services don't freely cross borders, and that's what tariffs are, not freely crossing borders.
There's tremendous taxation now called a tariff.
So when that happens, it usually leads to more problems.
And even today, we read and understand that China put increased tariffs on everything they're going to send to the United States by 34%.
And that's a big deal.
But Trump responded and said, well, maybe we're up for some negotiations.
And this back and forth, it's this loss of definition.
I think of tariffs suffering from the same problem that the monetary system has, because we have a monetary system.
The most important thing about money is should have a definition for the unit of account.
What is a dollar, one ounce of silver, or one ounce of gold, or whatever.
So that we don't have a definition for that.
So that causes too much overinvestment, underinvestment, too much savings, and a lot of malinvestment, financial bubbles, and also getting us involved in wars that we should be involved because if you have the reserve currency in the world, you can get away with it.
And that's what has happened now.
Now we're starting to see pushback and we're seeing some of the consequences that are natural.
But the one thing that is not natural and easily identifiable is exactly when things would hit.
But they have hit and we don't even know tomorrow what will happen.
There may be an announcement, oh, let's sit down and renegotiate everything and maybe things will shift around again.
But I think you have to have precise definitions of what the government can do and what you can expect on tariffs, as well as spending and running out debt.
So being upfront, telling the people and the investors in the world exactly what we're dealing with would go a long way to solving some of these problems.
But right now, the world is being forced into dealing with these problems of a sudden, tremendous increase in the tariffs throughout the world.
Chris.
Very good, Dr. Paul.
Yeah, it's still early in the Trump administration, so we can't be too negative.
But, you know, I think the expectations now that all the anticipation is gone from the election, the virtue of America and what made America great was freedom in relation to the size of government.
We, Americans, our ancestors, they had tremendous freedom that we wouldn't even understand today because of the situation we live in.
And the government was minuscule, all things considered.
You know, the connection with the individual to the federal government was what, the post office at most until the 1900s.
And the president was just the guy.
There weren't barricades around the White House where you had to protect them.
Today, the president is treated like a Caesar.
So it was flipped and independence of the individuals are gone.
So it's the size of government in relation to freedom, and that is not improving.
I hate to say it.
Government spending is increasing.
Government debt is increasing.
Republicans are being typical Republicans.
Expand the state even more.
Our president is starting new wars, stupid wars that have no benefit for us.
This was our problem that he was supposed to stop not stopping it, not bringing troops home, not closing bases, not stopping foreign aid.
Again, I don't want this is only a few months in, but these are all markers on what makes America great, and they're all going in the wrong direction.
And now we're being told that tariffs are a tax or liberation.
A tax is liberation.
You know, so this is all backwards so far, and we're not going back to what made America great.
Very, very good.
You know, there's been a headline and people talking about this is wonderful because this is the end of globalization.
And a lot of good conservatives, you know, recognize it.
Libertarians recognizing that there is some too much government mischief in the trade policy that existed.
But globalization isn't an all-inclusive term, that everything you do, if you do it internationally in a global sense, that it's always bad.
But the type of globalization that people have gotten annoyed with and has made things much worse are all the things that go on and all and all the agreements that are made and all the manipulation.
And then you get the international organizations and you have the secret organization like the military-industrial complex and many other things that pursue this.
But I think there are the people who say, well, this is in a way the end of the system and the end of this globalism that people are holding out as being bad because most of that is artificial.
It's political.
But I think, you know, Trump argues that for independence, we have to be independent, which I like the idea of independence, but I don't like the idea of isolationists in the sense of independence.
And once you start using tariffs and all, you're drifting toward isolationism because you don't want to deal with people unless you do it our way.
And it's a flaw in trade.
And that's why people always argue that things will get worse.
And this is something that I think is very important because the globalization that I like is voluntary globalization.
You know, people say that we as libertarians are isolationists.
Actually, it's sort of like they say, oh, libertarians are, you know, are all for getting rid of diversity.
No, we're the most diverse group of people ever because everything is voluntary.
Everything is voluntary, so there's no violence.
Two People, Voluntary Agreements00:06:20
And two people get together and they have agreements.
Instead, we have regulations that do this.
But, you know, there was something that occurred in the history of economics that I found astounding because for a long time, they dealt with these trade agreements and tariffs and that sort of thing by who benefits.
If I sell you something and you give me some money, somebody will say, oh, you got the money, so you're the beneficiary.
And they'll argue back and forth.
Who benefits from the trade?
Does the buyer or the seller benefit?
And it was always this argument over who did it.
But if it's voluntary, guess who benefits?
Both people equally.
You give up $10 for a $10 item and you exchange it, and both people are happy.
Now, you know, that is so fundamental and so clear-cut.
It's amazing.
They went centuries arguing this understanding in economics that one person has to suffer.
And in a way, this tariff business here, somebody has to suffer and get the advantage.
But for us to say that we had no responsibility, I think is a little bit over the top because I think that in a way, we had charged the reserve currency of the world.
We had the most powerful military in the world ever.
And we could dictate and threaten people and badger people into doing what we want.
So I think we have to look to ourselves for our type of policy when we overstep our bounds and say that we are right and we'll do it.
And now I think, unfortunately, what's happening right now, when you think about what China is doing, they're saying, oh, yeah, you're not going to get away with that so easy.
But even some of their arguments might seem to be viable because their tariffs have been heavier.
So there is a lot of sorting out, but you'll never sort it out with international global organizations and international governments.
It doesn't work that way.
What you have to do is get two people together to negotiate and talk about it.
And voluntary trade agreements, you know, I keep thinking about what if we could have had 50 small governments instead of the United States of America.
You know, what would we think if we had to control trade between each state?
Would we always want to have the balance of trade to work out perfectly?
And in mercantilism, one wants to benefit much more than the other, and they want to accumulate stuff and sell stuff to other people.
So that doesn't solve the problem at all.
But the globalism, voluntary for globalism is very good, just like voluntarism when it comes to diversity is very, very good because you reject the notion of government interference, reject the notion of power and force to force things on people, and they're not anxious to do it.
So a much more voluntary approach and thinking that through on trade or on money issue, most people right now are struggling to try to change the monetary system back to a voluntary money, which is the voluntary money of 6,000 years has always been the precious metals, gold and silver.
But right now, that's not much available to people.
That's why we have to protect the freedom to use our voluntary approach because that's where you'll find peace and prosperity.
Chris?
Very good, Dr. Paul.
Yes, we're being told that tariffs are liberation and this is going to usher in a golden age.
Can tariffs be a tool like President Trump is using to get other countries to reduce or eliminate their tariffs?
Yeah, I mean, we have to concede that point.
And that would be good.
But will businesses move their billions and billions here to America?
Now, the cheerleaders are, you know, absolutely.
Yes, it's only logical.
I'm not sold on that idea.
I don't necessarily think that businesses would.
And all I have to do is pretend that I have billions at my disposal.
And, you know, these are very big decisions that you're making.
Would I move them to America?
There are some big negatives.
Number one, the financial condition of our government, like we talked about, it's in shambles.
It's terrible.
It's as bad as it can get.
Am I going to move my billions into such a place knowing, if you know some history, that whenever governments get into trouble, they will take what you have without even thinking twice about it.
They'll take your assets to save themselves.
So that is a big risk.
Also, the big risk of moving your business here is the politics of this country.
We could in a few short years, in a snap of the finger, have a President Harris again.
You're going to move your business here and be forced to provide tampons for men?
I mean, is that the road that can happen?
This is risky stuff when you're dealing with multiple billions of dollars.
So our financial condition is terrible.
Government is not shrinking.
And we could have a President Harris in the blink of an eye.
So to think that businesses are just going to flock here because there's tariffs, I think is it's an unknown.
I would love to see it.
You know, it'd be better for our country.
But these people have big decisions to make that affect, you know, all these thousands of workers and billions of dollars investors.
And they're going to look for more stability versus what we have here at the current moment.
You know, the rules that you would have when things were dealt with by one-on-one, two people getting together, businesses getting together, and even small countries could have these agreements, which wouldn't require the United Nations and all the other international stuff that goes on.
Government Lies and Cheats00:03:07
But when the individuals are involved in trying to work these problems out, they do have rules.
They're very strict rules.
And they would protect people a lot better than how they're getting protected now or how we're protected, you know, and make safe how the government takes care of us when there's a virus out there going to attack us and we end up with a COVID monster.
But if individuals are dealing with each other, you still don't have any right to lie, cheat, steal, or kill people.
And everybody knows that.
A lot of it still goes on.
But when people are half awake, they deal with it because you're not supposed to lie, cheat, steal, or kill.
And that's been around for thousands of years, that understanding.
But the one thing that has multiplied in substitute is, yes, but it's still a mess.
It's still unsafe.
We have to have a little more license for the government.
And they're literally, recently I heard somebody, a little leftist, arguing the case that they ought to, people should ignore it when they tell lies.
I can't believe this.
So now, but even if they don't admit it, that's what all governments live by.
You can catch them all in lie.
They lie.
They cheat.
They cheat us by printing money.
They cheat us by transferring wealth from the rich to from the from the poor to the rich.
And they do that through the monetary system.
So it goes on and on.
So it's something that if we could only realize that governments cannot do anything you can't do.
And they lie and cheat and steal and send more.
How many millions of people have died at the hands of government while members, while many citizens could have said a lot more, as long as they weren't directly involved or they were brainwashed into believing, well, it has to be the government that's going to take care of us and we shouldn't have to be involved.
But the governments can do and they should do this.
And it's called the noble lie.
They think it's important for leadership to do this.
But I am very optimistic that if we had much more direct operations between people to people and groups to group and everything be voluntary and everything honor the fact that you can't take other people's property or hurt other people, what a difference the world would be.
But now we have this monster that fortunately is being exposed by Musk and others, how unbelievable it is.
So even though I who watch this, you know, and news things like USAID was an outrage.
It was even shocking to find out how much we've tolerated.
And then you try to remove it.
And then there's pretty strong support for keeping all this stuff together.
Price Gouging and Inflation00:04:15
But we need more specific rules reigning in the power and power of the government, both on social matters as well as on economic matters.
Chris?
Fantastic, Dr. Paul.
I'll finish up with one final point.
And it has to do with definitions, because we know that people that seek power, they redefine words.
And we have a savvy audience, so I'm sure most will know this, but I see it written all over how tariffs increase inflation.
It's just not, it's not accurate to say that.
A tariff is a tax, and prices can result in rising can, because there may be some products that have tariffs, and we're not going to see a difference because people adapt.
Different supply chains, they adjust things and the prices don't go up.
So it's not a definite, even though we could expect price rises, but that's not inflation.
Inflation is always a monetary phenomenon.
Increase in the money supply.
When that increases, that drives, you know, the price rises.
It's not just price rises from other stuff.
A hurricane hit area.
If you were to go to one right after it hits and go to a store and the prices of everything have tripled, you're not going to walk in and be like, well, boy, this town, the inflation is really bad here.
No, it's not inflation.
Same thing if you bid up stocks or a house.
It's not inflation.
The Tesla stock is up today.
Boy, inflation is really bad for Tesla or good, whatever.
So now, why?
What happened here?
Well, just like the natural immunity, the word vaccine were redefined to fit certain agendas, the same thing happened with inflation.
They turned it into, you know, the establishment, the, you know, whoever.
It became acceptable that it's just a rise in prices, and that's inflation.
And what it does is it destroys the actual definition.
So now, how do you define the actual definition?
That's the whole purpose.
So again, we may be nitpicking here, but it is important to know the difference between a tax and an increase in the money supply.
Very good.
I want to follow up on what Chris just said about some things are called inflation, but in the true sense of the word, that's very misleading.
But there was, I think it was a conservative governor or somebody else that there was an emergency, and this was recent.
And they said, boy, we're going to go after those people who are gouging the people.
They're charging more for water than it used to be.
And so it turns into it.
They don't want to even get into the issue of inflation or whatnot.
It's just the gouging.
But that is one of the most misunderstood issues because this was a statement about I was shocked because I thought he would understand economics a little bit better.
So if there's a natural event and there's a shortage of water and somebody knew that conditions were bad, but he said, they're going to need water.
I think I'll take a truckload of bottled water in here and I'll sell it.
And he does it.
He risks, makes a risk.
He spends a lot of money and who knows what he has to do.
And then he charges twice the amount.
Instead of a dollar a bottle, it's $2 a bottle.
Oh, he's taking advantage of the poor people who are now suffering and this sort of thing.
And they don't realize the economics of it.
The faster those prices go up, the faster the people will replace them.
So if you say, okay, if you have a dollar, if you go to $1.10, we're going to charge you with gouging.
And then would the next guy want to drive his truck through and take it and involve himself in danger in order to deliver something where he's going to lose money?
I mean, it just is, you know, economic sense should be a lot better than that because I think, once again, people are misled.
They're misled on the issue that Chris was explaining about calling it inflation and putting it in a monetary, you're getting it mixed up about a monetary issue.
Educating About Sound Economics00:00:57
And others are just saying, oh, yeah.
And that's the case.
A lot of people, generally speaking, will say inflation, the prices are too high.
It's the businessman's profits.
Then they go on and cause more trouble like that.
So economic understanding is very important.
And guess what?
I have a belief the last hundred years plus has not been very good at educating government schools, educating the people about sound economic policy.
But that's where I'm optimistic.
I think there's more homeschooling and private schooling and available information over the internet to explain a lot of these things.
So in spite of all the mistakes being made and all the malinvestment and debt that has to be liquidated, what has to survive are the ideas of sound economic policy and the principles of liberty.
Want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.