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May 9, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
24:38
The Blame Game Tariff Trump & Too Late Powell

The government is not shrinking, but expanding with greater spending and debt. The most exciting part of the second Trump Administration - DOGE - is fading away. REAL ID surveillance has been shackled onto us. And President Trump is arbitrarily setting tariff rates, in the same way that Jerome Powell arbitrarily sets interest rates. We need a turnaround, because the status quo is tightening its grip on America.

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Gold's Surging Dilemma 00:04:34
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.
It's great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
I'm glad to have you here today because I'm trying to figure out who's the best manager of our money.
Is it the president or is it the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board?
And I've come up to a conclusion that I'm sure you'll be able to address it and explain that to me.
Maybe neither one is able to be considered a good manager of the money.
I would say they're arguing over, you know, who's the most guilty in messing things up.
But anyway, it's the big end of the news.
And this is one of the reasons there's chaos in the markets.
Gold is going up significantly.
As I often remind people, I remember when it was zero because we weren't allowed to own it.
Then it goes to 35 and then 150 and on and on.
And been up, you know, in the first year, we were allowed to buy gold, went up to 800.
Tremendous increase.
Right now, it's increasing a lot.
It's over $3,000 an ounce and doubling back in the old days when we got away from the Bratton Woods.
It was doubling and tripling rather quickly.
But you think, well, they can't do that now.
It's $3,000.
Well, when it was $1,000, I thought it won't be doubling and tripling.
Well, $1,000 went to $2,000 to $3.
So it's hard to believe and understand that if we continue the policies that we have been following, you know, gold could, you know, double and triple again.
And that gives some people a dilemma.
The people who knew about it work hard to try to protect themselves.
But unfortunately, protection with gold is good in a limited fashion because you have to think of why is it that, why is it going up so fast?
Is the chaos so bad that tyranny is on its way and who knows what will happen when the depression came?
They took all the gold away from the people.
Well, I tell you right now, there's a lot of dilemma because the stock market has done fairly well in these last couple of years.
People have made the money in there and they don't know exactly what to do.
And it hasn't been easy to take the money when I was first investing.
When I first went into my medical practice, you didn't have a mutual fund where you could stick bullion.
But this is one thing.
Today, there's a gold fund that you can invest in or change into hard assets.
And there is a company that we work with or partners with, and that's Birch Gold Group.
And they promote this and explain it and offer you information.
So what I'd like to do is just give you a telephone number or a text number for free.
And they're not going to charge you if they send you information.
But if you text Ron, 989898, you will get some contact with Birch Gold.
And they will help our person along in changing maybe their stocks to gold bullion in a mutual fund.
And it's one of those things that people, a lot of people are doing it more all the time.
But it's something that if there's a need of any help and you want to learn more about it, that's what I would advise to text Birch.
And that is Ron 989898.
They'll send you information and it won't cost you.
And I want to thank all our viewers for turning in today.
And of course, Chris is with us today.
And guess what we're going to talk about?
Gold and we talk about gold pretty frequently, especially on Fridays.
And gold has been going up significantly.
It makes its corrections, but the gold signal is very powerful.
And there are other things that for me are very powerful.
Is the debt growing?
Is the spending growing?
Has Elon Musk solved all our problems and Trump cut back on spending?
And there's a different day ahead for us, and the markets will be calm and it'll be more steady.
See, not too many believe that.
Government Spending Skyrockets 00:08:29
I don't believe that.
There may be very good intentions, but I think right now, since the legislative process has begun, you don't hear too much about how they're going to slash the spending.
Quite frankly, if they talk about slashing spending, they're usually only talking about proposed increases.
We're going to cut $2 trillion from the budget.
Well, they made the budget so big.
Find it cutting $2 trillion doesn't get you back to zero increases.
It just lowers the amount it increases.
But it's something that is difficult to follow at times.
But this week we had a meeting with the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve had its, I think, at every six weeks meeting, and everybody hangs on every word, every phrase of the chairman, as if he knows something about monetary policy.
But sometimes when you look at what's happening, even he admits there's chaos there.
And I thought I found it fascinating some of the ways he described this.
He says his policies that he's doing is now waiting and watching and the danger to this and following the course he already followed are extremely low in danger.
So he's assured himself that it's okay.
Now, the president has a little disagreement with that.
Now, I'll tell you one thing that I think I can defend this.
Trump misses no words.
He misses no words.
And he hasn't exactly been a golfing buddy with Powell.
But here's a headlight on Zero Hedge yesterday.
Trump slams Fed Chairman Powell as a fool in fiery rat rate grant.
Is a showdown, is a showdown looming.
And I think we're in the middle of the showdown, and they're all pretending that they can take all of it.
But the big argument is whose fault is this?
They're not saying there's no problems.
Whose responsibility is it?
And what are we going to do about these problems?
And the people who love Trump and probably tariffs too, their solution is put tariffs on it, collect a lot of money.
We might do so well.
We'll get rid of the income tax.
And there's this hope.
But I'll tell you what, I don't know if too many people, the people in the financial markets aren't buying into that.
And I just don't think that's likely to happen.
Tariffs may have a bit of benefit one place or another, but they're really not a solution to spending and taking care of the debt that we have.
Now, the big thing is Powell comes back and says that he has inflation under control.
Trump says that he would use tariffs and then Powell comes back and says, oh, that's inflationary.
If you have too many tariffs on it, that's a cost.
He's right.
The costs go up.
People have to buy more.
And they like right now, they're buying in a hurry to try to compensate for it.
But if you don't mess around with monetary policy, just because of tariffs, tariffs themselves will cause imported prices to go up.
And you can't predict which one and how long they will last, that sort of thing.
But the Federal Reserve blames Trump for this.
But Federal Reserve Board Chairman over the years that I've interviewed with them, they always blame the Congress, which is closer to the truth because the Congress answers the questions to all the special interests, the evil ones, as well as the innocent ones that are demanding spending, which they're doing right now.
And it's that demand for money and the politicians wanting to stay in office if they give somebody something for free and they go and fight wars that they think they're going to make the world safe for democracy.
And guess what?
They use a lot of money, they run up the debt.
And who backs all that debt up and makes sure that it doesn't just go vacant and just sits there and the crisis really comes to the surface.
So the Fed steps in and inflates the money.
So it's the Fed that causes the inflation.
But I tell you what, prices can go up by tariffs and taxes and all the efforts.
So price increases because of a drought or a hurricane or something like that.
That is not inflation.
That's a normal market reaction.
And we'd all be better off if we just accepted that and worked out those problems separate.
But right now, everything is guided by and surrounds the people what to do with the money.
And the most visible sign of what they want to do is what the president is arguing with Powell, because Trump says lower interest rates.
Well, they usually lower interest rates when they're in a slump and they admit it.
Well, we are.
But lowering interest rates is hard.
That means more inflation.
You can't get lower interest without the government buying more treasury bills.
So he's really the inflationist here.
But the one that, in a very sophisticated manner, Powell, he's the one that raises the interest rates anyway.
It keeps them high.
But the one thing is ultimately it gets sorted out and the market will find what real interest rates are.
But to get to that point, the economy has to go through some rocky times.
And I think that's what we're witnessing today.
Chris.
Right, Dr. Paul, we are in a big mess.
There's a new face in the White House.
It's a familiar face because he was there before, but the mess is still the same and getting bigger.
And it's because it's very easy to understand the government is not shrinking.
The problem in America is the size and scope of our government.
It was supposed to shrink.
People voted for it very enthusiastically.
I remember all the speeches, Ramaswamy, Elon Musk.
It was countless speeches of all the things that were going to happen to get government off our backs.
And it's not happening at all.
And unfortunately, the most exciting, especially from my perspective, aspect of the second Trump administration was Doge.
And that is fading into obscurity.
It's because the politicians were never, you know, they like the pictures with Elon Musk that they took, and they liked tweeting how great Doge is.
But when it comes to actual, we're going to cut the government, not going to happen.
And Thomas Massey was right once again, because he knew it was not going to happen.
And he was lambasted on X by the influencers, you know, who are really no different than the people on TV.
They're just on X, who said, get on board with the Trump agenda.
Anyone who goes against the Trump agenda is going to get steamrolled and primaried, primary Thomas Massey.
The cuts, the rescissions will come later.
You'll see.
He was right.
They are not coming.
Government spending and debt are going to skyrocket even more.
So this is the issue that we're in.
It's like we were taken once again because government is not shrinking.
The troops aren't coming home.
The wars aren't ending.
And the government is still on our backs.
And that's the problem that we face.
I want to read the note that Trump sent out his posting regarding this issue probably yesterday.
He says, too late.
He's referring to Jerome Powell.
Jerome Powell is a fool who doesn't have a clue.
That's pretty harsh.
Other than that, I like him very much.
Oil and energy way down.
Government Spending Skyrockets 00:11:01
Grocery prices, eggs are down.
Virtually no inflation.
Tariff money pouring into the U.S. Wow.
Boy, we live in great times.
But the whole thing is, is he wants tariffs.
Tariffs will push up prices.
And whether it came directly from money supply increases or whatever, it's going to not make the consumers happy over this.
And somebody said, another person commented, it says, analysts warned that Trump's public attacks could further complicate the Fed's effort to balance.
This is, I guess, the responsibility of the Fed.
The Fed's efforts to balance price stability and economic expansion.
And, you know, that is a challenge.
But the market can solve those problems.
Money supply is dictated by the market, and price stability is dictated by the absence of a Federal Reserve or any central bank.
So as Wall Street digests the latest developments, investors are bracing for potential volatility.
No joke.
So see Trump's push for lower rates as a bid to boost growth ahead of his trade war is impact.
Well, that's not too encouraging.
And I don't think that we're seeing good diplomacy when it comes to the relationship of the executive branch and the Federal Reserve, which is okay because we shouldn't have the Federal Reserve.
And we should have an executive branch much smaller in scope that didn't have so much economic authority.
I mean, I hear a president can tell you, executive order, well, I'm going to raise tariffs $10 billion tomorrow on ABC company.
And it involves not billions, trillions of dollars in trade get affected by this.
So it would be easy to solve some of this problem, but it isn't going to be all of a sudden you're going to get the right guy in the executive branch and the right guy at the head of the Federal Reserve and a different Congress and have a lot of more Thomas Masseys in Congress to cut the spending and remove the incentive for governments to go into huge debt and then feel pressured to print the money.
Over the years, when I talk with the feds, they always said when I challenge them, why you'd print all this money and buy all this debt?
He says, well, it's you guys.
It's just the Congress.
And, you know, he has a point there.
And that's a good excuse.
Although I think they're in conspiracy.
I think the big spenders in Congress and very often the executive brands, because all of them want to have war, and that's one of the biggest motivators for this.
And the Fed would never hesitate to provide the money to go to Ukraine and the Middle East and Iraq and all these places that we go in and save so many people.
Think of Vietnam and all these things.
So it's a coalition and it's a conspiracy.
Oh, that's horrible.
But it's dignified and nobody knows exactly what's going on because it's sort of hidden.
So, but this all will come to light and it will all end and there will be major monetary reform eventually.
A lot of people are talking about it right now that it's on our doorstep.
Chris.
Right, Dr. Paul.
You mentioned, yes, that Trump calls Powell a fool.
And what Powell does is foolish.
It's a fool's errand.
He doesn't know what interest rates should be.
None of them do.
It's arbitrary.
They set it based on the goals that they want to achieve.
And they hope that they'll achieve the goals by fixing prices.
So it's foolish.
But at the same time, Trump is being foolish with setting the tariffs.
He doesn't know what the tariffs should be.
This morning, I wrote Trump: 80% tariffs on China seems right.
Why not 76%?
Why not 83.2%?
It's arbitrary.
He doesn't know what tariff rates should be.
So this is more central planning.
You have one guy fixing interest rates, another guy fixing tariff rates, and neither of them know what either of them should be.
So this is more central planning nonsense in our lives that we can do without both of them.
And it's a shame because they're both being foolish.
And as far as Trump saying that inflation is down and virtually none, that's not in my life.
You know, when I go to a supermarket, nothing has come down.
I'm paying the same thing for eggs.
Now, I'm not everybody, but those are my prices, and I don't see anything coming down.
But again, when Biden was in there, he said inflation was 0%.
So when you're in there, you could say whatever you want.
Just tell people there's no inflation.
And many people will just repeat it.
There's no inflation.
That's what Trump said.
So we're in a bind with central planners, Dr. Paul.
And, you know, they're both being foolish.
That's for sure.
You know, I want to quote Powell.
He was asked at the question session after the meeting the other day.
And they wanted to know, and somebody asked him whether he, Powell, sees a path to a soft landing for the U.S. economy.
The Fed chair pointed to the uncertainty surrounding trade deficit.
So, yes, I mean, the chairman of the Federal Reserve has to be smooth and cool and positive.
I have things under control.
Yeah, there's a bump in the road, but there'll be a soft landing.
We're not going to have engine failure.
So he goes on, he says, to explain that position, he says, what looks likely, given the scope and scale of the tariffs, if the tariffs are ultimately put in place at those levels, which we don't know, then we won't see further progress toward our goals.
Oh, there's an out already.
At least for the next, let's say, year, we would not be making progress toward those goals.
That shouldn't reassure the markets.
The thing is, we don't know that.
That's confession, I would say.
There's no such uncertainty about the scale, scope, timing, and persistence of the tariffs.
And there is a lot of uncertainty about it.
And he's right about that.
And I'm sure that the results of the tariff argument has a long way to go.
And the one thing is that we have weakened ourselves internationally in our dollar being weakened.
We're weakened in our military.
And the proposal to compensate for that, especially a weakening of our dollar and a weakening of our military presence, is spend more money.
And that's what they're, that's what the real trouble they're having in Congress right now is trying to cut a couple dollars and cut taxes and then increase spending.
And they did cut some in the proposed budget.
They did cut some of the proposed increases, but it's just the proposed increases, but they added to the militarism.
And they say, well, that's national security.
That's our safety.
And I say to that baloney, I don't believe it serves as a safety factor for us.
I think it serves the benefits of the military-industrial complex.
And that is what we should be dealing with.
Chris?
Excellent.
Dr. Paul, I'll finish up with my closing thoughts.
As conditions deteriorate, if they deteriorate further, blame will become more prominent.
It will intensify.
Trump surely won't take any blame on the economy.
He could blame Biden.
He could blame Powell.
And blame is a PR thing.
And it happened against Trump.
You know, the Democrats did it for years.
They tried to tie him to Russia.
There was no truth to it.
It's all made up.
But it doesn't matter if the people believe you.
You can make it up.
So that's what the blame game will be.
If things continue to go south, Trump will either deflect to Powell or, you know, what I hope does not happen to some foreign nation or foreign nations, and it leads us to war.
That's the pattern throughout history.
When things go south with your policies, go to war, and that'll just take everybody's mind off of what you've done.
Let's hope that doesn't happen.
We can't afford something like that.
Our principles have not changed.
We hope this someday happens.
It's not happening now.
The government needs to shrink.
The troops need to come home.
The bases need to be closed.
No more foreign aid and endless wars.
Those are the only thing that matters.
Not the first trillion dollar military budget, which is a black hole.
So as of now, it's not happening.
We could always be hopeful for the future.
Very good.
You know, this whole mess, I want to close with a generalized statement, the whole mess that we face.
And it has to do with spending, the monetary system, the value of the dollar, our foreign policy.
And we've gone in the wrong direction.
Those questions are usually asked in political polling.
Yes, wrong direction, right direction.
And I would say, yes, we've been going in the wrong direction for a long time because the expansion of government is steady and it's exponential.
The more messed up we get, the faster the growth has to be.
And if you look at our spending, that is exactly the case.
We're on an upslope, a rapid upslope to increase it because now we can barely, we have to borrow money to pay interest on the debt.
So it's absurd.
And they do not think it's an emergency yet to do what they should be doing.
And I argue that the whole mess of spending, whether it's debt or whether it's wars or the maldistribution of wealth, which is a significant event under these conditions and an incentive for a lot of chaos down there.
And I say, this would not happen if you didn't have fiat currencies run by and printed by our Federal Reserve System.
So it isn't like you have to make it very complicated, but because this is a way of thinking you can get it for free and subsidize everybody or anybody and whoever are the noisiest and the most powerful political figures who can come to Washington and get on the list of getting the appropriations.
Believe Me, They Were Challenged 00:00:33
Believe me, they were challenged with the Trump victory, and there's a lot of good people there that would still like to do it.
And there's quite a few still in Congress, but right now it doesn't look like they're in the driver's seat.
So what we have to do as a people is spread the message and get them to orient toward, you know, the principles of personal liberty and how that will solve these problems.
And we have to deal with making sure that we have a sound currency as well.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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