Vivek Ramaswamy to Tucker Carlson: ‘We’re on the Cusp of a Major Economic Downturn” in 2024

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy predicts a recession in 2024, telling Tucker Carlson on his eponymously named show, Tucker on Twitter, that it will lead to frustration among Americans, which he says could trigger either a positive and “creative” revolution for having endured the hardships or a negative and “destructive” one. 

Ramaswamy and Carlson spoke for about 45 minutes and touched on a variety of topics, ranging from foreign policy – specifically Russia, Ukraine, and China – to domestic issues, including the economy, Hunter Biden’s legal woes, and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks:

Ep. 17 Vivek Ramaswamy is the youngest Republican presidential candidate ever. He's worth listening to. pic.twitter.com/9wGqptHdto

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 17, 2023

Around 12 minutes into the conversation, Carlson asked the 37-year-old entrepreneur, who is the youngest GOP presidential candidate in history, for his prognosis on the economy and if he is “concerned about … a real economic reset in the next year?” 

Ramaswamy gave a grim forecast, saying he is “quite concerned,” and pointed to a “deeply inverted yield curve” in his explanation:

I think that 2024 is going to be a year where  – it’s not going to take a lot of guts for me to make this prediction because I’ll tell you what’s easy to make – we’re on the cusp of a major economic downturn next year. We live under conditions of a deeply inverted yield curve. …  It’s basically what you would expect in the long run. Long-run interest rates on long-run bonds are higher compared to interest rates on short-run bonds because there would be a higher risk of being repaid back. That’s how things are supposed to work.

There are a wide range of factors that can occasionally cause that to tilt in the other direction. We’re in one of those conditions right now, where the interest rates on short-term bonds are significantly higher than they are on long-run bonds, and every time that’s happened in the last 40 years, that has predicted a recession that followed in the year or so that came later. And there are lots of complicated reasons for why, and economists can debate it, but what’s not debatable is that that’s exactly what happens. That’s where we are now, which is why we’re, I think, in the calm before the storm.

While President Joe Biden has touted “Bidenomics” and his low unemployment numbers, the surging candidate says that “misses the point” considering “there are twice as many jobs open as there are people looking for work.” 

He added that, in his view, “people have stopped looking for work” – a sentiment he expressed in February when Breitbart News followed him on his first day on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. At the time, he said, “It becomes a habit” after one is accustomed to not working and loses the sense of “purpose” work generates. 

He told Carlson: 

I mean, people are being paid more or have been habituated more to staying at home than to go to work. People also don’t have the skill sets required to actually show up to work because they have four-year college degrees that were subsidized by the U.S. Department of Education without actually having the skill sets that many employers badly need in order to grow their business, whether it’s a big business or a small one.

He also knocked Biden and Democrats who have touted that the “rate of inflation is clung down.” 

“Inflation is cumulative. Things are still 16-20% more expensive than they were in 2020, and wages have not gone up in the same way over the same period. And so there are deep structural issues with our economy,” he said before predicting “a likely reckoning,” adding, “2024 could be a pretty good prediction for when that’s coming.” 

Carlson emphasized that when people are accustomed to living a certain lifestyle and then suddenly lose their wealth, they “get radical.”

“Especially against the backdrop of already having deep distrust — in my opinion, appropriately deep distrust — in our existing institutions, including the government in this country,” Ramaswamy responded. 

An economic calamity or recession could trigger one of two outcomes, according to the former Biotech magnate: 

Sometimes you go through hardship, and you’re strengthened by that hardship. I’m just thinking about it as an individual in my life. Like I’ve gone through hardship in my life, my father’s been through hardship – in each of those cases, that led us to become stronger for having gone through that and did things that we otherwise would have never done, created things in the world that otherwise would have never existed, and that’s the positive version of this, and it’s the version I want to see for our country.

But there’s a very different way this could break, too. I think that if we don’t channel that frustration in a direction that creates something anew, a sort of reincarnation of our American experiment, which is what’s going to be required, then I think this ends the way that many other revolutions do. It’s not the creative kind but the destructive kind. And I think the economic collapse … calamity … recession that I think at least that’s coming could just be the catalyst. …  That’ll be the final match that’s lit, but it’s the kerosene on the floor that we have to pay attention to in the meantime.

The interview comes as Ramaswamy has surged into second place in multiple polls this week, while several others also show him on the up and up.