Gold: Safety on the Sidelines of the Trade War
Things to keep in mind while Alien and Predator are locked in mortal trade combat, whipsawing the stock market, and trampling ordinary people underfoot:
There is hardly a sector of the market or an area that won’t be affected. American farmers are already being slammed. To cite but one example, Farmers for Free Trade reports that in 2017 farmers in Washington state sold 270,000 metric tons of wheat to China. In 2018, their sales dropped to zero.
At the same time, the costs of the trade war include billions in welfare the Department of Agriculture is paying to the struggling farmers.
The additional taxes on goods (tariffs are taxes) are costing Americans an estimated $3 billion a month.
The research teams at the major investment banks are pumping out reports daily about which industries and stocks will be hit hardest. It’s hard to find any that won’t be hurt. And the currency consequences can be huge as well.
The last big trade war, and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, led to a world-wide stock market crash and a global depression that seemed endless.
We don’t pretend to know how long this stand-off will last or who will blink. Tariffs always invite retaliatory tariffs, but no one can say in advance how much things will escalate.
We’ll leave others to take wild guesses about such unknowns.
We prefer to advise you to simply get out of the way.
We’ve all seen terrified and innocent bystanders get crushed in movies with battling behemoths like King Kong vs. Godzilla. We think it wise to stand aside and not be crushed and victimized.
That means retreating to the safety of gold and silver. Trade war often lead to hot wars, but even when they don’t, they are still financially destructive to stocks and paper currencies.
Speak with your RME associate today about getting your wealth out of the way as giants thrash about destroying anything in their path.
