Trump Slaps More Tariffs on The American People When Will It End
The tariff stories that Americans have been told deserve to be questioned. First, we Americans are overwhelmingly paying for the tariffs. They are "slapped' on us. Meanwhile, China is selling less to America, but they simply shifted to selling to the rest of the world, and they're breaking records with trade surpluses. So China has not been "slapped," while we Americans have. At the same time, America has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs since the beginning of 2025. Something isn't right here.
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.
Great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We have a couple subjects to talk about, but there's one little one that keeps popping up again.
You'd think they'd listen to our program and get rid of this thing.
But the obsession.
The obsession, and I don't, I think that's a reserved term.
The obsession on tariffs solving all our problems is, you know, so totally bewildering.
But we've worked hard at trying to explain to the people, and I'm sure our audience understands that tariffs, they want you to believe, oh, put a tariffs on China and they won't be able to do this and that, and we'll be able to compete with the Chinese capitalists.
Oh, but we have to do that immediately.
But guess what?
When the tariff is paid, it's the U.S. government that collects it, and it goes into the kitty, and they can use it any way they want.
And it's something that just doesn't make any sense.
And they point out short-term benefits, possibly, and believe that government manipulation and maneuvering in the market is the only thing they can do.
That's what the government's there for, to protect us.
And by doing that, they have to manipulate the price of things.
They have to have price controls, especially on interest rates.
They have to spend money to stimulate parts of the economy that nobody else will stimulate.
So they're our protectors.
And they believe this sincerely.
So the do-gooders come along and they say, well, yes, if we put tariffs on China, everything is going to be okay.
But what they don't tell you is that's a bunch of intervention.
That's more government and not less government.
And they've used this for centuries.
And there was a period of time in the last century that many and most of the economists, but not during the Depression, the Depression was made worse with tariffs.
But it's been that way for a long time.
They think it's an easy way out, just like they think it's an easy way out when people are running out of money.
Just give them more money.
And they don't even bother counting the fact that the more money we print, the less valuable the money is.
And guess what?
An unusual thing happens.
The price of goods go.
People want more money, more of that counterfeit money to try to make up for it.
And it's a hoax.
And they get away with it till it gets to a certain point.
And right now, the people are very, very concerned.
And they're getting very worried about this.
And they should be.
It's one of the reasons we talk about gold a lot on this program, because, you know, I got interested in gold as long as I can remember because I was a coin collector.
But as a kid, I couldn't find gold coins.
They weren't in circulation.
But there were silver coins there.
Silver, you had silver in dollars, and you had silver in half dollars and silver in dimes.
But you didn't have any gold anyplace.
And even the nickel had real nickel in it.
And even the pennies, even the pennies, believe it or not, they had copper in them.
But not today.
It's all fake.
And that's why we have so many of these problems.
And that's why we do emphasize gold, because gold has served the people well who understand money and think their savings has to be preserved.
But real value, things of real value are important in times when the money is being destroyed.
And that's what's happening.
So that's the reason that we partner with Birch Gold is because that's what they do.
They're in the business of gold.
And I have a telephone number or text number that I have on the screen there.
And it says, Ron, 989898.
And you can get in touch with Birch Gold if you're interested in finding out how gold bullion can be put in retirement funds.
And that might be beneficial to some people.
So it's worth checking into it.
People say, oh, no, gold's too high.
$3,000.
It's going to be $4,000.
It's too late.
Well, if you think it's too late, then you think the government's going to balance the budget and reduce the size and scope of government.
Well, we know that it didn't work out.
There were some fancy words said during the last campaign.
First six months, there were some fancy words.
And we were told that we would be working toward a freer market.
And unfortunately, this freer market that they gave us ended up more manipulation of the market and more isolationism.
Yet, what do they do about isolation?
They say, we who defend the free market, we're the isolationists.
We want to trade with people, talk with people, travel with people, and stay out of the internal affairs of other nations.
And they call us the interventionists, that we want to intervene.
But who gets involved in how many wars have happened since World War II?
There are so many because if you count all the little ones, they're way too numerous.
And that's when the seeds were planted.
Actually, they were planted at the Bratton Woods Agreement right after the war when we said we would guarantee the value of the dollar at $35 an ounce of gold.
And Henry Hazlitt, a very well-known journalist, Austrian school person, he said it wouldn't work.
It wouldn't work.
It would all fail.
And he was right and it failed.
In the 1970s, it failed.
And that's when the mess really hit me.
It is going to fail.
And that's what the predictions were all the way back into the beginning of the fraud started at Bratton Woods.
The Seeds of Failure00:09:16
So this is important.
And what happened at Bratton Woods, they said, we're bankrupt.
We don't have any more gold and we're not going to honor the dollar.
That was a big event for me and a lot of other people.
So if you want to get more information on the issue of gold being put into retirement funds, just look at what's on the page, I think, on the screen.
And that is text Ron 989898.
And now, Chris, want to come back to something very specific because I've already mentioned it.
And it's a big deal, you know, and that is that we've been hearing about tariffs and they're bragging about how wonderful it is.
And prices aren't really going up.
That was one of the reports today that the tariffs haven't hurt the prices at all.
And they thought tariffs would raise prices.
Well, the bottom line isn't there yet.
So there's a lot of harm done.
But the one thing you can't predict is say if you put on the tariffs today, people might anticipate and react to it, but they might ignore it for a while, hoping the government's telling the truth.
They'll ignore it, or they'll want to work a better deal with the government.
All these things.
That makes sure that when there's human action, a human input, that you can't predict it with a computer.
That's why the computer is not the perfect instrument.
If it was, everybody had a computer would do the same thing and it would have no value.
So people are individuals make the decisions and they add up.
And there is still a market out there, but it's very chaotic and it's very destructive.
And it stimulates people to be very competitive.
And that's why there's arguments and fights over wealth distribution.
So there's no advantage as far as I'm concerned about tariffs.
And Chris, I believe you have a couple ideas about tariffs.
That's right, Dr. Paul.
The story is still the same.
The problem in America is the size and scope of the U.S. government.
It needs to be cut.
Americans need freedom.
We are not getting that.
The gravity maritime is growing.
The debt is growing.
The deficits, all of it.
Even people that were fired by Doge are coming back to.
Why not?
And we get central planning.
And the central planning is what we're covering today: the tariffs.
As we said, it's going to be the Americans that are paying it.
And Goldman Sachs reiterated that.
They said Americans are paying 86% of the tariffs.
So we just got taxed.
That's what happened.
And you think, well, we're getting more manufacturing here.
No, since January 1st, 2025, America has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs.
And you think, well, we're going to go get those Chinese.
No, again, the Chinese are exporting less to us.
That's true.
But they just shifted to the rest of the world and they're selling more than ever.
Record trade surpluses for China.
It's almost as if we did them a favor by putting up the tariffs.
And, you know, we hear, well, they're going to bring all this money.
The president says $17 trillion is going to be invested here.
That's, you might as well say $100 zillion.
You know, that's 17,000 billions.
Where on earth is that kind of money going to come from?
Where is it sitting around?
You know, and we would see the hustle and bustle.
Boy, if 17 trillion were invested in the United States, we would notice it, you know, and they would tell us about it for sure.
You know, but instead, we're getting the exact opposite.
The peace president every single day is warmongering against someone, whether it's now Afghanistan and Ukraine and Venezuela and Iran and in Gaza.
It's like a carousel that just goes around.
You're not making America great again here by being a warmonger.
We should have no time for wars.
We should be building up our country.
So we've gone the wrong direction, Dr. Paul, and it's a shame.
But the solution is still the same.
We need the government to shrink and we need Americans to give freedom someday.
Very good.
And, you know, if everybody understood what was happening, like you describe it, and I agree with what you said, but the conditions would be different.
People would act differently.
But here's an article from Zero Hedge this morning, I believe.
It says, Fed's favorite inflation indicator, that's the PCE personal consumption measurement, indicates show no signs of runaway tariff costs.
So they're measuring it, and these PCEs or, you know, whether it's the consumer price index or the productive index, so it doesn't go up.
But did you ever hear of government rigging anything, rigging a statistic?
They've been notorious for that.
And the Fed does it all the time.
So you can't even believe that.
But even if it's true, the one other thing you can't measure is the variation of when do things happen.
If you inflate the currency today and you print a trillion dollars tomorrow, the next day, it isn't absorbed into the economy.
And then when it is absorbed, it goes different places at different times and people hold on to it or spend it at a rate nobody knows.
And that's why the market irons out the messes that the government creates.
But this is a sort of a propaganda thing.
No signs of runaway tariffs cause.
Well, you know, statistically, they can't say.
And maybe there's a half-truth to that.
But the thing of it is, it's doing it for the wrong reason.
One of the reasons is, is that some of our companies, especially this was true in the 70s.
I remember when the automobile industry was really in shambles, and they said, well, we got to keep the automobiles out.
This is it.
I think when we put tariffs on companies around the world, I think it's a mission that we can't compete in the world.
So we have countries who still identify as being socialistic and they're outproducing us.
So we say, well, we'll take care of that.
We'll put tariffs on their stuff and ruin their business.
So there's an incentive to give a protective tariff.
And that's the worst thing you could do because the market says, if somebody's making a bad product, the consumer makes the decision.
If the consumer won't buy it, we do hear things like that, especially when in recent years you hear about the social interference in the market.
And people just give up and they won't buy certain items.
And I think that's the way it should work.
But the consumers can take care of that.
But no, they want the government to do this.
And it's wrong.
So I think this is one thing that they believe.
All tariff is patriotic.
And if you don't do that, you're an interventionist overseas, which is exactly the opposite.
Most of the time, in politics, if you have one party or one group blaming the other party of being fascist and all these other things, probably the people who are making the accusations, this was certainly true in the last campaign.
The ones that were making most of the accusations were the ones that were the most guilty of these charges made.
That's why what we talk about here in this program is that the solution to this is more liberty, less government, and following the guidelines given to us from the Constitution, because these problems wouldn't exist.
We would have, just think of our foreign policy, no entangling alliances, no wars since World War II.
I mean, it is, just think of how many people wouldn't have been killed if we would have just followed the rules because the money wouldn't have been there.
And that's why people have to realize none of this could have happened until they really, really gave more and more power and prestige enough to counterfeit the money.
They're the greatest counterfeiters ever known in history.
And that is the Federal Reserve and the dollar.
But it's coming to an end, and we ought to get more people to try to prepare for it.
Excellent job, Dr. Paul.
Yeah, the tariffs really entrenches cronyism, the worst form of corporate government relationship.
And it's also arbitrary.
You know, this happened last night out of the blue.
You just hear Trump puts tariffs on kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, upholstered furniture, heavy trucks, and pharmaceuticals.
I mean, where's he just, it's why not sneakers and shorts and shirts?
Tariffs and Cronyism00:03:25
I mean, why this and not that?
You know, it all seems so arbitrary.
You know, if you're the corporation, somebody doesn't just come protect you for nothing.
You know, so there's probably cronyism going on in all of this stuff.
And once you give corporations subsidies, it's just like individuals.
Good luck getting rid of it.
You're not going to be able to take it away.
It'll be politically impossible, you know, and it just further entrenches.
And the corporations, because they're tied to the state, they crank out worse products because who cares about the competition?
You've got the government at your back and their customer service goes down the tubes.
We all know the monopolistic companies in our country.
Cable comes to mind.
No matter where you are in a country, dealing with cable companies is the worst.
Because they have their niches and they're protected.
So why create more of this?
And that's what we're going to end up with, which is going to create an even bigger mess.
Just this current enthusiasm for a tariff in this administration, when it was first announced with their first tariff, it involved automobiles.
I guess we're not competing with ourselves.
So in a way, it is.
So they put tariffs on imports of automobiles.
And every automobile had to be built in the United States.
Well, you can't find any.
But we have an integrated economy.
So I saw an article shortly after this.
They said, yeah, they keep cars from coming in, but we build the cars here.
We can't even get the parts for the cars.
So it was just damaging to the people they were supposed to be protecting, the car manufacturer.
And now, guess what?
Cars cost a lot of money.
Somebody was telling me the other day, one of my habits is I wouldn't have been good for the car business because I never liked the idea of paying a lot for that first year of an automobile.
And I didn't have this desire for the very expensive cars.
I was cheap that way.
So they do this and they make it available to us.
But the cars, if you get a car, now they're tens of thousands of dollars.
I can't even believe they tell the story, but they probably can't believe that gold, which used to be $35 an ounce and a silver dollar used to be $1.29, that now you're talking about thousands of dollars for gold and even silver, up to nearly $50 an ounce for a coin that when I was delivering newspapers and saving silver coins, they were worth $1.29.
That's how much silver was in an ounce of silver.
So the whole thing has changed so much.
But I thought it was a bit of irony that the first tariff they put on was a big harm to the car industry.
And guess what?
From hearsay, because I ask questions, what's the cost of the other automobile?
What's the cause of that?
And I can't believe it.
But they probably can't believe how much gold and silver is worth either.
That's right, Dr. Paul.
I'll finish up with my closing thoughts.
Subsidizing Dependence?00:07:42
It has to be said because once these ideas aren't said, then we're in big trouble.
We need less government, no central planning from government.
They do not know what they're doing.
It's all political, you know, and cronyist with the corporations.
It's not happening in this administration.
It's unfortunate.
And we're probably ushering in the far left after Trump.
So it may be a while, but still have to call for what is right, less government.
Get the boots off our necks.
There is so much creativity in this country that is just squashed because we live in a micromanaged bureaucracy and we don't even know any better.
We think that this is normal stuff because this is how we've always lived.
And it's trickled down to even the neighborhoods.
You need a permit for a lemonade stand, permit to have a garage sale.
You know, it's just red tape bureaucratic rules from top to bottom in this country.
And it's squeezing us like an anaconda.
But, you know, Trump is giving it another squeeze in this administration.
We need to go in the opposite direction and unleash the creativity that exists in this country.
But you can't do it with the biggest government in history.
It's impossible.
It's one or the other.
We're either going to have the biggest government and no creativity, or they get out of the way and Americans can be the land of the free once again.
Very good.
You know, I believe in the rule that says that if you subsidize something, that is, you know, through government largesse and government redistribution of wealth, if you subsidize something, you're going to get more of it.
And I think that is very true.
And we subsidize to a sinful degree illegal and sometimes violent immigration problems.
And, you know, all the stories about, you know, veterans can't getting a place to live and people getting moved out and government paying for hotel rooms.
It was just insane.
And so they got more immigration.
They got more problems and more crime.
And I have to say that in some areas there, it looks like there's a sincere effort by the administration.
I worry sometimes about the details of the civil liberty issue.
But overall, I think they're trying to iron out the problems of the subsidies that came to the immigrants, and they were willing to take the risk.
Now we're not subsidizing the risk, and there's lots less people doing it.
But if you subsidize it, it will lead to some problems, and it'll be wholesale.
But that could do this subtly as well.
If you're subsidizing something through an evil monetary system where certain people get benefits, you're going to get more of it.
So the benefits in a monetary system, as the government creates the credit, they're backed up by the deep state and crony capitalism.
So they end up, guess what, with more money.
So what do we have?
We have more money in the hands of fewer people than ever before.
Do they have a million dollars?
Do they have a billion dollars?
Do they have $10 billion?
That's very rich.
Now you have trillions of dollars.
I wonder what they're going to do with it.
What I would do is make them take it, take their money in silver and make them walk across the country as their penalty.
No, it's a crime.
It's a crime.
What's happened to the monetary system?
But my point is, is if you benefit from this subsidy, you're going to want to be close to it.
And I think this administration is a little bit too close to the corporations that are benefited unfairly.
This is a characteristic of inflated monetary system because there's a maldistribution.
And it generally is just that way because somebody has to get the money first to circulate the money.
And by the time it circulates, it loses its value.
So the costs go up.
And most people don't realize that inflation is their biggest issue.
Yesterday, I talked about 67% of the people in this country today are living their paycheck to paycheck.
That is dangerous.
That is a real problem.
What if you are one of those people and you lose your job?
And yet the system is so fragile.
It's all been built on lies and fraud and promises to certain people.
And there's been a lot of promises to the poor, you know, and they've joined in.
And a lot of people did this.
The voters are responsible.
They vote these people in.
And some of the people who know what's going on, they're very frustrated with even being in the Congress.
But they do it.
And it's hard to change it.
Can you tell the people, well, we're going to balance the budget?
You know, if I were a temporary dictator for five minutes and I said, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask every ounce of appropriations to decrease their budget 1% a year.
The people who try to live on this funny money, they might lose it all in a month because the prices go up.
But if they do that, you say 1% a month, you just have a decrease.
The government has to decrease it.
And I think that's one thing the administration has pointed out.
Some of the really, really wasteful, dumb ways that they've been spending money.
And they deserve to be reduced a lot faster than 1%.
But if you did that with everything, 1%, I'll tell you what, it would be accepted.
A person that would do that, they'd be run out of town because that would be, you'd be a fascist if you were doing that.
They'd call you nasty names to try to save the economy.
But saving the economy and saving our system is not complex.
A lot of people would ask me, Ron, I agree with what you're doing, but what am I going to do?
I said, the people could do it if they got to the point where we really accept the principles of liberty and the principles of sound money.
What should you do?
Well, you could start with reading the Constitution and erase anything you heard in those government schools.
Not anything, but most of the bad stuff.
The stuff that you were taught, the economics you were taught in the government schools and the government's own indirectly all the universities, because almost every one of them gets money from the government.
So it isn't that complex.
It's just that it's built in to get people dependent on government.
And if you don't listen, we'll punish you.
And I think it's a bad system.
It's going to come to an end.
But I think we should work very hard to point out what should replace the system we have today.
And it's simple.
Liberty.
Liberty is the answer to this.
And if we want peace and freedom, that is the way to go.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.