In 2007, the world economy began to show signs of an impending downturn. At the beginning of March 2008, the Federal Reserve was forced to rescue the corporate bank Bear Stearns. Suddenly, the crisis became an undeniable fact, even among the most optimistic among us. That very same week, gold prices rose to over $1,000 dollar per troy ounce. The recession of 2008 began to gain in strength. The banking system came close to a complete collapse. On Monday September 15, 2008, the crisis reached a

Trump is on collision course with its trading partners: the U.S. trade deficit apparently proves that the U.S. is being fooled by its foreign trading partners that sell more to the U.S. than that they buy in return. Hence, Trump thinks that he can “win” a trade war by slapping on import tariffs until the trade deficit with any given individual country exactly equals zero. Any country that has a trade deficit with the U.S. is at risk of Trump’s insanity.

Last week the White House dropped a bombshell: Trump will impose an import tariff of 25% on steel imports and 10% on aluminum imports. For how long the import tariffs will apply, remains unclear. Stock market dropped violently in reaction to the news: the news seems to have surprised investors, despite the fact that Trump on multiple occasions threatened to impose import taxes to “help the domestic industry.” Industrial and manufacturing jobs should come back to the US, according to Trump. Although gold prices (at the time of writing) barely moved on the news, an impending trade war will be bad news for the consumer but positive news for gold prices in the mid-long term.