Well now, without further delay, let’s get right to this week’s exclusive interview.

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome in Greg Weldon, CEO and president of Weldon Financial. Greg has over three decades of market research and trading experience, specializing in the metals and commodity markets, and his close connection with the metals led him to author a book back in 2006, titled Gold Trading Boot Camp, where he accurately predicted the implosion of the U.S. credit market and urged people to buy gold when it was only $550 an ounce.

He is a regular presenter at financial conferences throughout the country and is a highly sought-after guest on many popular financial shows, and it's always great to have him on the Money Metals Podcast. Greg, good to talk to you again and welcome back.

Greg Weldon: Thanks, Mike. My pleasure.

Mike Gleason: Well, Greg, let's start by getting your update on what impact trade policy and tariffs may be having on the U.S. economy. We last spoke in July. Tariffs were just beginning to actually take hold. Since then, the President has imposed additional tariffs. Anecdotally, we have seen some effect. We've recently ordered some steel storage lockers for our client storage vaults and the price was increased 10% based on the higher cost of imported steel. There are also wholesale price increases coming on one line of the preparedness products we offer on our SurvivalGoods.com website. We can assume lots of businesses are experiencing the same sort of thing. Do you think tariffs are now having a significant effect? Is any of the recent weakness in the equities markets attributable to trade policy, do you think?

Greg Weldon: Yes, no, and yes. First of all, in the sense of is tariffs having an effect, absolutely. But maybe not in the way you think and not in the way you couched the question. What I find really interesting is the Fed just published a really comprehensive survey last week in which they asked businesses, manufacturing firms, I should quantify, but this is where we're talking about in terms of trade ... Manufacturing firms in terms of the impact of tax cuts versus the impact of tariffs. And the results were fascinating, because the impact of tax cuts was dramatically positive, as you might suspect. But what you might not have suspected was the impact of tariffs, which were there a degree of percentage of firms which had negative impact from tariffs? Yes. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was somewhere less than 20%.

At the same time, there was roughly something like 13% of firms that said that tariffs actually helped their businesses in terms of generating high revenue and to whatever degree there would be benefits to certain businesses, so offsetting and mitigating the negatives of the 20%, the 13%. So the net-net negative was not as big as you might think and was overwhelmed by the positives still from the tax cuts. We know that to be true as it relates to labor, stock buybacks, and even wages.

I think from the U.S. economic slowdown perspective not a big deal, and that's what Trump's counting on. But the bigger picture, absolutely an impact, because it's affected China so much, and China was already slowing. So the GDP numbers that came out, and you know that we look at most things from a mathematical perspective, and one of the knocks on China is the slowdown in retail sales, the slowdown in money growth, the slowdown in GDP growth, the slowdown in industrial production and FDI.

But the nominal numbers are so high in trillions of renminbi that of course you're going to have a percentage slowdown, because you came from such a low base. So something like retail sales, you've gone from a 15% year-over-year rate to 9, and everyone's up in arms because the consumer in China's slowing. No, it's a record number every month. It's just a lower percentage gain because the nominal numbers are so huge now.

But right here, the third quarter numbers, were different. There was real weakness, and it's kind of even ahead of tariffs, which are going to cause more problems for China. We already see inflation on the rise. We see commodity prices in renminbi breaking out here, big thing that nobody's really talking about too much. And the renminbi's about to take out 7, probably going to 7-1/4. So yes, major impact, but it's on China.

Then you see the flow through to how this affects the U.S. and how this affects other global markets, and this coming at a time when you have a lot of other things going on: The Fed, what's happening with emerging markets, how emerging markets, specifically Turkey, might flow into Spain, and how Europe is vulnerable. So, there's a lot more than just tariffs going on. Yes, there's a major impact, but it's not on the U.S. economy. It's in the market vis-a-vis what's happening in China as a result.

Full podcast: https://goo.gl/rKxkuN