The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series Global Depression Is Coming Sooner Than Expected || Peter Zeihan
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Dec 5, 2025 The conversation dives into how current tariff policies are fast-tracking an impending global depression, not causing it outright. Demographic shifts, like declining birth rates, are causing a shortage of consumers and producers. The U.S. role in global trade is examined, along with the inevitability of deglobalization from 2025 to 2035. Trump's policies are highlighted as accelerators of this shift, while suggestions for rebuilding domestic industrial capacity are discussed, emphasizing the challenges posed by current trade policies.
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Century-Long Demographic Tipping Point
- Demographic decline will reduce consumers, producers, and capital across many countries in the 2025–2035 window.
- Peter Zeihan says this generational shift makes a global economic model unsustainable without major structural change.
U.S. Retreat Drives Deglobalization
- Deglobalization will intensify as the U.S. can no longer underwrite global trade security and subsidies.
- Zeihan argues this breakdown will create a global-scale Great Depression during the coming decade.
Tariffs Speed An Inevitable Shift
- Trump's tariffs accelerate an inevitable collapse rather than cause it outright.
- Zeihan says tariffs hasten regional dislocation by breaking economic logic for external plants without replacing domestic capacity.