January 23, 2026
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:
We've got serious structural financial problems in the United States that need to be solved. We shouldn't be antagonizing, you know, peaceful countries around the world. In fact, I think we've already done enough damage with all with all the tariffs to try to inhibit global trade because free trade benefits everybody and tariffs that limit the freedom of individuals to pursue, you know, their best options when it comes to how they consume and how they spend their money overall is harmful to the global economy.
Peter uses an eyebrow-raising example - the administration's talk of buying Greenland - to explain how fiscal ambitions can force the Fed into monetizing debt, which in turn destroys purchasing power and accelerates flows into hard assets:
But the only way to get around having to borrow the money to buy Greenland is to have the Federal Reserve print. And right now, you know, there's a big battle going on between the White House and the Fed. And that may be solved by Trump appointing another yes man to run the Fed. But yes, if the Fed buys the bonds that the government has to sell to raise the money to buy Greenland, then that's just going to create massive inflation in the United States and further suppress the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.
He also highlights the constitutional angle: tariffs are taxes, and under the Constitution only Congress can levy taxes - yet the political branches may try to sidestep that limit while the courts face enormous pressure not to intervene:
There's no question that Trump's tariffs are unconstitutional. I mean, it's not even a close call. It should be nine to one. I mean, nine to zero in favor of striking them down because the Constitution is very clear that taxing authority lies in Congress and that all revenue bills must originate in the House of Representatives and tariffs are taxes. They're designed to raise revenue. And Donald Trump is not a king. He cannot unilaterally tax the American public. Congress needs to vote to tax the American public. And so it's pretty obvious.
He closes by calling out the practical mechanics of U.S.-China trade: it's effectively vendor financing, where America uses newly created money to buy foreign production - a dynamic that shifts real resource costs abroad while leaving Americans with monetary liabilities:
Right now, or when China trades with America, they have to loan us the money to buy their stuff because we can't afford it. It's a giant vendor financing scheme. But America, you know, is the one that benefits. China gets the short end of the stick because they have to expand real resources to produce products that make our lives better. And all we do is create money out of thin air and give it to the Chinese.
This article was originally published on SchiffGold.com.