Peter Schiff: Trump Trade Revitalizes Market
On Tuesday, Peter took to his podcast to cover the last week in news. In politics, sinking confidence in Vice President Harris has led to what Peter calls a “Trump trade,” where Donald Trump’s rising odds of winning in November create bullish sentiment on Wall Street. Peter also hits on campaign promises made by both Trump and Harris, discusses Bitcoin’s recent surge, and explains why the income tax’s creation was a classic bait-and-switch.
In Peter’s eyes, the market believes Trump will lift burdensome regulation from the backs of American business:
“You can see that the markets are starting to believe that Trump is going to win this race, and that’s bullish for the markets. I mean, what is Donald Trump promising? He’s promising to lower corporate tax rates—that’s good. He’s promising less regulation—that’s good. So, lower taxes, fewer regulations—that’s bullish for the market relative to what the markets would be encountering in a Kamala Harris administration. I think that’s what’s going on with the market.”
Bitcoin recently surged back to $67,000. Peter chalks this up to overall market sentiment, and notes that this is still within the cryptocurrency’s recent trading range:
“I do think it is part of the Trump trade because a lot of people in crypto believe that Donald Trump is very bullish for Bitcoin, and that if Trump wins, Bitcoin’s going to moon—that the U.S. government is going to be buying Bitcoin. Now, again, it’s not going to happen. In fact, Trump has made a lot of promises, and I’ve gone over some of those on the podcast. But one promise he did not make was to buy any Bitcoin.”
The market is feeling bullish, but that doesn’t mean the economy is in good shape. If it really was healthy, we wouldn’t need rate cuts:
“You’ve got this false narrative that’s been spreading around ever since that BS jobs report we talked about, that this economy is actually a lot stronger than people thought. So it’s the best of both worlds in that we’ve got an economy that’s growing—which is good for corporate earnings—but the Fed’s cutting rates anyway. So the market’s got its cake and is eating it too.”
On the campaign trail, Kamala Harris recently promised to give loans to black entrepreneurs. Peter points out how absurd and discriminatory this is:
“Imagine if Donald Trump came out with a plan saying, ‘I’m going to give $20,000 to white people who want to start businesses.’ You have to be white. Could you imagine the backlash he would get? But somehow Kamala Harris can have a program where you have to be black, only black people can get the money, and nobody says it’s a racist plan.”
Harris’s proposal is probably a response to her waning support among black Americans, who are starting to realize that they got a raw deal from the government:
“It’s refreshing to see this rebellion going on right now within the African-American community, because they know that they’ve been sold out by the Democratic Party. I mean, I’ve called the Democrats poverty pimps for years. They’ve entrapped blacks in poverty. All of these Great Society programs were deliberately fashioned to create dependency– to create dependency so you can get votes.”
In a tangent on the history of American taxes, Peter notes that tariffs were supposed to be replaced by the income tax. Adding additional tariffs on Americans already burdened by taxes is not wise, no matter which party does it:
“It’s not good that we have to pay tariffs again. I’ve pointed this out before: the reason we moved away from tariffs was because we created the income tax in 1913. The purpose of the income tax was to replace tariffs. Why? Because the average American voter paid tariffs and wasn’t going to pay the income tax—that was the bait and switch. Politicians told American voters, “We will stop the tariffs being paid by ordinary working Americans and replace that lost revenue by taxing the billionaires just one percent, two percent. They’re rich; they can afford it.” … And the voters bought it; they bought into it. Then the next thing they knew, they got slapped with income taxes.”
For more analysis of these topics and more, check out Peter’s recent interview on Soar Financially.