Schiff w/ Jimmy Morrison: Prepare for Data Revisions

Peter recently joined Jimmy Morrison on his show, “Let Us Disagree.” He delivers a candid analysis of today’s economic terrain, connecting long-term monetary trends with the pitfalls of trade policy and exuberance in crypto markets. In this wide-ranging conversation, Peter draws on personal experience to highlight gold’s value proposition in 2025 and compares today’s world to the pre-2008 recessionary build-up. Along the way, he also recalls the influence of his father and his time interacting with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Early on, Peter draws a sharp contrast between the prevailing trade narrative in Washington and the underlying reality. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, the United States has benefited from global trade imbalances—not the reverse:

But I think the biggest mistake that everybody is making, not just the Trump administration but all the Republicans that are rallying around him, are the impact of these tariffs. … Trump is of the opinion, and so are a lot of the people that are advising him, that the U.S. has been taken advantage of by the rest of the world—that somehow, by producing stuff for us to consume and loaning us the money to pay for it, they’ve been screwing us over, and that’s got to end. And Trump’s got it backwards. They’re not screwing us over, they’re subsidizing us. 

Peter then spells out the consequences of protectionist thinking. He warns that tariffs are unlikely to play out as their proponents hope, and that their true cost will be felt here at home, not abroad:

But what Trump doesn’t get is if the tariffs accelerate the end of this process, which was going to end eventually—that’s been one of my forecasts. I thought it would be a dollar crash that would bring it about; maybe it’s going to be the tariffs. What happens is we erect all these tariffs, and according to Trump and Lutnick and these guys, the foreigners are going to pay them, that it’s external revenue, that we have an external revenue service now.  … No, they’re not going to pay for any of it, because it’s just going to raise the price of imports, and as a result, we’re not going to import as much. 

Pivoting to the state of the U.S. economy, he makes the case that the recession has already arrived—masked only by faulty data and delayed recognition by official agencies:

I actually think we’re already in a recession. I think we’ve been in one for a while, just like with the 2008 recession. It actually started at the end of 2007. We were in a recession all through 2008. They didn’t call it until 2009. They went back and revised the data. So they may go back and revise everything from 2024 to show that we were already in a recession, which is why Trump won, right? We were in a lousy economy with high inflation, stagflation. 

Finally, Peter reflects on his commitment to challenging statist orthodoxy and reaching out to those influenced by interventionist dogma. He particularly recounts his time interacting with the Occupy Wall Street movement years ago, when his interview with protesters went viral:

It was probably one of the better things I’ve done as far as the impact that it’s made on people. … A lot of people have told me that, ‘I was very much a socialist, liberal, whatever.’ … They’re fascists or, you know, corporatists, statists, we call them socialists. But a lot of people who believed in the big government lie watched that. And that either convinced them just all by itself or got them to think about it enough to do some more research. And ultimately, it turned them around.

Be sure to watch Peter’s other recent interview with Glenn Diesen!