By the way, folks, Friday we learned that the first quarter, right, the fiscal year we're in our first quarter for the country, our deficit was $200 billion, right? So above last year, so $700 billion, we spent that much more than we took in. And this brings me to my next guess. He's been talking about the 10-year topping out at 5%. Probably that's going to happen. That puts downward pressure on the economic activity, but also the market's path to policy. He thinks it's too hawkish. So let's bring in monetary macro CEO, dot com CIO rather, Joseph Wang. Joe, it sounds like to me though, we were just talking about these interest rates. You don't think inflation is what's driving up yields right now?
Well, I think it's a little bit, Charles, but I think the bigger part is just the path to policy like Steph mentioned. So if you look at what's happening in the markets based on the short-term interest futures, not too long ago, the market was pricing in five Fed cuts this year. Today we're just pricing in one cut. Now that comes down to three things. One is that inflation has been a little bit stickier than expected, but let's be real. It's only modestly above the Fed's target. The other point is that the market was afraid of a recession, but the economic data so far has come out surprisingly strong. So the market really isn't worried about that. And the third point is the Fed came out and told us that they don't really want to cut a lot. And so the market is taking all that into stride, pricing in fewer cuts. And so you got the 10-year surging. Now I don't really think that the 10-year can really stay here that long though. It's really clear to me that it's really having a definite impact on equity.
Now I remember listening to Lenard's earnings call just last month in December, and it was a big miss and they were guiding pretty gloomily noting that the higher mortgage rates were definitely impacting their activity. But in addition to that, you see the stock market just having trouble digesting these yields. So I think this is kind of a self-correcting thing. So you go as yields approach 5% slower economic activity. And I think that will force the market to pricing of cuts again. That gets back to what economists always say, higher rates are the cure for higher rates kind of thing. I mean, to your point, hey, I want to hit this because part of this story too has been in the tariff talk.
You see it in FOMC minutes. You know, some are saying that's why yields are going up. You put out a pretty intriguing tweet at the beginning of the expo said in the last year, President Trump used this chart on more than one occasion. You said the market is making the same mistake of being too skeptical on Trump's plans. We're lacking a cost of significant policy changes where tariffs become a major source of revenue and a foreign policy returns as a potential tool. And you're saying they're not priced in. So talk to me about that for a moment. The idea that, you know, the tariffs are being talked about on Wall Street and Main Street as this dark cloud that's going to wreck our economy. But we can see from the chart in past history for a long time it was the majority of the revenue we took them. We know things have gotten a little more complicated, but talk to us about why the streets make a mistake.
Yeah. So that is by chart. The yellow highlight is mine. It was an honor to have that used by the president. So I think the street is actually a little bit too pessimistic about what this can mean. The first is that, you know, if you want to take a step back and look at tariffs as a mechanism, you know, if you look at free trade, for example, let's look at China. Now China obviously doesn't have free trade, right? They have tariffs. It's really hard for companies to sell into China. And by using that mechanism, they've able to build a very strong manufacturing economy. So in some context, tariffs can be very helpful. Now there's a lot of academic work that suggests that when you have a tremendous, tremendous trade deficit like we have in the US, having tariffs can be a good thing. It can raise employment because of course, you have more manufacturing jobs created. And so that's a and it can create more GDP because of course, we have more being produced in the US. Joe, let me know. I'm sorry, but run out of time before you go, keep going.
I want to just kind of share. I know Stephanie doesn't like the soothsang, but you did a little bit yourself. So I just want to share with the audience. Your S&P 500 target, 5500, seems a little low to me, but you're looking at the T&U yield. This is the most important thing in this conversation. Coming back down to at least four, gold at 3,000 and no recession. My friend, we got to leave it there. We'll pick up the conversation real soon. Thanks a lot, buddy. And congratulations on having a president elect user chart.