At his Peter Schiff Show, host Peter Schiff specializes in throwing cold water on the assertions of politicians and people in the media concerning American economic matters. Though partial to Donald Trump over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race, Schiff is still quick to rebut Trump when Schiff sees Trump offering proposals that are economically ignorant and destructive.
Such was the case in the Saturday episode of Schiff’s show when Schiff addressed Trump’s announcement last week that Trump wants, should he win the presidential election, to create a sovereign wealth fund for the United States government.
Here is what Schiff had to say in part about Trump’s sovereign wealth fund plan:
I was listening to a Donald Trump rally, and one of the things he just proposed, and I’m not making this up, but he said that the United States should start a sovereign wealth fund. Right, like Norway has, we should start a sovereign wealth fund.
What? We’re broke. We’ve got sovereign debt. We have a sovereign debt fund. We don’t have any wealth. That’s the problem. We’re 35.35 trillion in debt. What is the point of having a sovereign wealth fund? And where are we going to get the money? We are going to borrow money? So we are gonna lever ourselves up, and, what, we are going to put the US government in charge — some bureaucrat is gonna be in charge basically of a levered up hedge fund that’s 100 percent debt? We’re gonna just borrow all this money?
No, the first thing we need to do is pay off our debt because we have to pay interest on our debt. We shouldn’t even talk about a sovereign wealth fund until we get rid of the sovereign debt that we have. Right, we got to get out of debt. It’s like someone has all this credit card debt and is saying ‘well maybe I should start, you know, a brokerage account.’ No, pay off your credit card debt first.
That is the kind of sound advice Trump needs to hear from advisors on a regular basis to help ensure Trump’s policy proposals as a candidate and, maybe later, policy actions as president are grounded in reality and in advancing Americans’ best interests.
During Trump’s completed term as president the national debt rose more than during any previous single presidential term. And, now, he is not even proposing debt reduction. Continuing to increase the debt that is at an already incredibly high amount is not the path to making America great again. It is past time to stop adding new debt to fund a sovereign wealth fund or anything else.
Trump would be wise to ask Schiff to be a go-to economic advisor.
