We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇺🇸 President Trump wants to switch to war economy in 2027 with massive increase in military spending and massive cuts to healthcare and other domestic agencies
Once a deficit hawk — he said in 2016 that he thought he could balance the budget in five years — Trump ended his first term with $7.8 trillion in added debt. His 2027 proposal is expected to give an update on 10-year deficit projections currently estimated at around $16 trillion.
The GOP's message for the Midterms will be focused on the "need" for a massive defense build up while the Democrats' message will be focused on affordability.
The fiscal 2027 budget will be the first time Trump puts his second-term governing agenda into one comprehensive document — with the numbers to back it up. The budget he released last year lacked detailed line-by-line spending targets and the economic assumptions necessary to project the long-term cost of his proposals.
Investors in US Treasuries will be looking to see if the debt and deficit levels rely on overly rosy economic numbers that predate the war in Iran, and whether they depend on spending cuts that have no realistic path to overcoming a Senate Democratic filibuster. Any increased doubts about the sustainability of US public debt could cause long-term Treasury yields to rise.
Projections released by the White House last September estimated that Trump’s tax and spending policies would halve the projected deficit over the next 10 years. But that number relied on tariff revenues that the Supreme Court decision upended, as well as lower interest rates and higher growth than many economists now expect.
Trump has said he will be seeking to boost defense spending to $1.5 trillion from less than $1 trillion in the current fiscal year. The details of how this massive increase will be spent are yet unknown.
Last year’s budget relied on a one-time boost to defense spending, using a legislative process known as reconciliation to pass $113 billion in new spending along party lines — on top of a bipartisan baseline of $848 billion.
Now the administration is looking for a much larger baseline increase in the defense budget. Trump hasn’t made clear whether the $1.5 trillion figure is just for the Pentagon operating budget, or also includes other defense line-items like military construction and nuclear weapon spending by the Energy Department. Nor has the administration detailed whether the increased spending would continue in 2028 and beyond.
There are also unresolved issues for the current fiscal year. The Pentagon has sent a $200 billion request for immediate spending to the White House to pay for the war against Iran. The White House budget office is evaluating that proposal, which Trump has not yet proposed to Congress.
Intellectual masking is the deliberate regulation of how much of your knowledge, reasoning, and analytical ability you reveal so that others form a controlled (and often incomplete) assessment of your capabilities.
Its purpose is to manage perception, reduce unnecessary attention, encourage others to reveal more information, and preserve strategic advantage until demonstrating full competence serves your objective.
🛢 We Are 'Still' Going Full Speed Into The Wall
Product storage is about to get tighter unless China steps in and lifts the product export ban. If it does, expect a meaningful reversal in crude.
WTI is barely hanging on to $70 for its dear life, but please remember that consumers use petroleum products like gasoline and diesel; they don’t use crude oil. Refineries do, and this is why it was always important for us to pay attention to crack spreads along with crude timespreads.
Note: Please divide it by 3.
The fever in the market today is that crude is oversupplied, but products are undersupplied. How can this be possible?
Well, China’s June crude import data so far is -4.7 million b/d y-o-y, and teapot refineries are operating at 50% utilization. Compared to US refineries operating at 95% and PADD 2 refineries operating over 100%, you can see where the disconnect is.
But here’s the thing. If end-user demand isn’t down and you still have a production shut-in of ~8 million...
