Financial Times (May 7)
“US fuel exports have surged to a record level as Europe and Asia lean on American energy supplies to make up for the shortfalls caused by the war in Iran.” Last week, America exported over “8.2mn barrels a day of refined fuels including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel,” a year-on-year increase exceeding 20%. Last week’s “huge demand for US energy” also transformed America into “a net exporter of crude oil for the first time since the second world war.” While this provides “a windfall” to US energy companies, “it also risks a political backlash for President Donald Trump as domestic pump prices rise.”
Tags: 20%, 8.2mn bbl, Asia, Backlash, Crude oil, Demand, Diesel, Energy, Europe, Exports, Fuel, Gasoline, Iran, Jet fuel, Record, Shortfalls, Surged, Trump, U.S., War, Windfall
New York Times (April 29)
“Trump appears to be miscalculating yet again, believing that his blockade and economic pressure on Iran will succeed where his bombings failed…. Two months into the war, Iran and the United States each seems to feel it is in the stronger position. Faced with the prospect of making concessions to the other side, each may prefer to delay or escalate, with the world economy held hostage.”
Tags: Blockade, Bombings, Concessions, Delay, Economic pressure, Escalate, Failed, Iran, Miscalculating, Stronger, Succeed, Trump, U.S., War, World economy
Bloomberg (April 25)
“The Strait of Hormuz oil shock has yet to crash demand as the rich world borrows from its stocks and pays up to secure supply. Traders are now sounding the alarm that a harsh adjustment is coming.” The IEA believes “global oil demand is on track to slump the most in five years this month.” Things will surely get worse. “A billion barrels of supply loss is already all-but guaranteed — more than double the emergency inventories that governments released” since the conflict began. “With a stalemate between US President Donald Trump and his Iranian adversaries dragging on, the impact is increasingly shifting west — and to products that are central to consumers’ everyday lives.”
Tags: Adversaries, Alarm, Billion barrels, Conflict, Crash, Demand, Emergency inventories, Harsh, IEA, Impact, Iran, Oil shock, Rich world, Slump, Stalemate, Strait of Hormuz, Supply, Traders, Trump
Fortune (April 14)
“The White House promised a manufacturing renaissance. Instead, the factory floor keeps shrinking…. During Trump’s first year back in the White House, the manufacturing sector alone shed 108,000 jobs—even as the administration touted a coming ‘manufacturing boom.’” The trajectory has not improved. As of this March, there have been about 150,000 net job losses per year in the manufacturing and construction sectors.
Tags: 150k, Construction, Factory floor, Job losses, Manufacturing, Manufacturing boom, Renaissance, Shrinking, Trump, White House
Wall Street Journal (April 13)
“It’s still too soon for a verdict on President Trump’s ‘excursion’ in the Middle East…. But it isn’t too soon to offer a tentative judgment on the president’s biggest foreign-policy action to date: ill-conceived, ill-planned, ill-executed and, so far, failing.”
Tags: Excursion, Failing, Foreign policy, Ill-conceived, Ill-executed, Ill-planned, Middle East, Tentative judgment, Too soon, Trump, Verdict
New York Times (April 12)
Make no mistake “Trump’s war is weakening America,” but nobody should “root for this country to fail. We all have a stake in the nation that he leads. So does the rest of the free world. There are no other democracies with the economic and military strength to counter China and Russia. When America is weaker and poorer, as this war has made us, authoritarianism benefits.”
Tags: China, Democracies, Economic, Fail, Free world, Military, Mistake, Poorer, Russia, Stake, Strength, Trump, U.S., War, Weakening
Wall Street Journal (April 2)
“There is something not at all right when the weightiest decisions of a democratic republic depend so much on the mood of one man.” Before Trump, “there were forms and traditions and processes, there were strictures, rules, the law, expectations, all of which would hem in the head of the executive branch.” Today, however, the “president’s mood” determines everything. “People have become habituated to this, tolerate it, factor it in. But of course when you factor it in you are enabling and continuing it.”
Tags: Decisions, Democratic republic, Enabling, Executive branch, Expectations, Habituated, Law, Mood, Processes, Rules, Strictures, Tolerate, Traditions, Trump, Weightiest
New York Times (March 21)
“From his first announcement of the attack on Iran on Feb. 28, President Trump has issued a stream of falsehoods about the war.” It’s well documented that “lying is standard behavior for Mr. Trump,” but “lying about war is uniquely corrosive. When a president signals that the truth does not matter in wartime, he …. makes it harder to win by hiding the realities of conflict and by making allies wary of joining the fight. Ultimately, he undermines American values and interests.”
Tags: Allies, Attack, Conflict, Corrosive, Documented, Falsehoods, Iran, Lying, Realities, Signals, Standard behavior, Trump, Truth, Undermines, Values, War, Wartime, Wary
New York Times (March 15)
“Two weeks into a war against Iran that he chose to launch, President Trump faces a stark choice — stay in the battle to achieve the dauntingly ambitious goals he has set, or try to extract himself from an expanding and intensifying conflict that is generating damaging military, diplomatic and economic shock waves.”
Tags: Ambitious, Battle, Conflict, Damaging, Daunting, Diplomatic, Economic, Expanding, Extract, Goals, Intensifying, Iran, Launch, Military, Stark choice, Trump, War
Bloomberg (March 6)
“Until the conflict with Iran broke out, President Donald Trump was getting — by design or by chance — what he appeared to want in three pivotal financial markets: lower oil prices and Treasury yields, and a weaker dollar. The air strikes that the US and Israel launched over the weekend, and Iran’s counterattacks, are unraveling that.”
Tags: Air strikes, Chance, Conflict, Counterattacks, Design, Dollar, Financial markets, Iran, Israel, Oil prices, Treasury yields, Trump, U.S.
