... Two Very Large Crude Carriers controlled by Saudi’s shipping arm Bahri
were seen loading crude at Ras Tanura, the world’s biggest oil port,
while another is heading towards the terminal, the data showed on
Friday. A fourth VLCC waited nearby. Each VLCC is capable of loading 2
million barrels of oil.
... Ras Tanura sits on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast on the Gulf and is west
of the Strait of Hormuz. It used to export more than 5 million bpd of
crude before the conflict. The country’s largest domestic 550,000 bpd
refinery is also located at Ras Tanura, which was shut during the war as
a precautionary measure.
Aramco last loaded a cargo from Ras Tanura port for China on March 8,
LSEG data showed, and had to divert its exports to the Red Sea port of
Yanbu after the Iranian blockade of the strait during its war with the
U.S. and Israel prevented ships from entering the Gulf.
The war has caused Saudi crude exports to slump to about 4 million bpd
in the past three months, the data showed, from more than 7 million bpd
in February.
... [Rystad Energy] now estimates that shut-in production across the Gulf
has fallen to 9.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in mid-June, down from
11.7 million bpd just three weeks ago, and expects a full supply
recovery in the region by the end of the year.
Aside from the fact the president thinks this is a good thing when he normally doesn't, Why in June 2026 is the president linking to a Reuters article from January 2026 talking about the 94.6% increase in the trade deficit in November 2025, the largest increase since March 1992, is the question you should be asking yourself.
Of course the numbers have been revised in the interim, but the November 2025 percent change was still YUGE.
And yes, what does that have to do with the report of the April number today, which is the occasion of the president's post?
The answer is nothing.
Needless to say, Trump thinks trade deficits are a bad thing when he has all his marbles together, which this evening he clearly does not.
And we called Joe Biden President Applesauce Brains.
And incidentally, President Trump has a cumulative trade deficit to date of $1.154 trillion.
... "The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it again," the USDA said.
... Dudley Hoskins, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the USDA ... “USDA invested heavily in the tools needed to eliminate NWS ever since
cases started increasing in Central America and Mexico,” Hoskins said.
“The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it
again.” ...
... Washington has halted cattle imports from Mexico and invested millions
in setting up a new sterile fly production plant in Metapa, Mexico. But
it will take roughly a year to come online.
... The U.S. eliminated screwworms in the 20th century by flying planes over
hotspots to drop red-striped boxes packed with sterile flies, sometimes
called “cupcakes” by ranchers. The USDA constructed a fly production
plant in Mission, Texas, in 1962, that pumped out 96 trillion flies
until it was decommissioned in 1981. Now the USDA is planning to
resurrect the plant to disperse sterile flies, while Texas officials
have scattered 100 screwworm traps along the border.
USDA inspectors known as Tick Riders who patrol the border on horseback
to guard against another pest, the cattle fever tick, have also been
tasked with conducting screwworm preventive treatment for all cattle and
horses they find in the border area.
At the heart of the problem is an unworkable math equation. The USDA
estimated 500 million flies need to be released weekly to push the fly
back to the Darien Gap. At its maximum, the Panama plant produces just
100 million.
“It’s an overwhelming situation at this point,” Dr. Lansford said.
“Screwworm is obviously doing well in Mexico, and they’re up against the
same challenges we are.” ...
... Moscamed, as the factory is called, will begin manufacturing 100 million sterile flies by July 2026. ...
Until now, the sterile flies that are spread throughout the country to
combat the screwworm plague (100 million each week) are brought from a
plant managed by the Panama-United States Commission for the Eradication
and Prevention of the Cattle Screwworm (Copeg), in Panama, where they
have been working at maximum capacity to control the pest since January
2025. ...
With the other leg of the project, the construction of a manufacturing
plant for these flies in Texas, international efforts project a
production of up to 500 million flies per week, which will be released
throughout the region. If international cooperation continues, myiasis
could be eradicated in less time than the first time. Some
representatives of Senasica have even talked about achieving this goal
in five years. ...
USDA didn't break ground on the Texas facility until two months ago.
... Initial operational capability targeted for November 2027, reaching production of 100 million sterile flies per week.
Construction continues immediately beyond initial operations to scale
full production capacity to 300 million sterile flies per week. ...
This new state-of-the-art facility will complement USDA’s ongoing
production of 100 million sterile flies per week at the Panama-based COPEG facility.
USDA has also invested $21 million to support modernization of Mexico’s
Metapa, MX facility, expected to be operational in summer 2026. ...
... Sperm in microgravity still move, they just cannot find their way. The function that appears to be disrupted is navigation, the ability to orient and move with purpose toward a destination. ...
... Self-dealing played a direct role in Noem’s defenestration.
The department approved a $220 million contract
— funneled in part through firms run by Noem and Lewandowski allies —
for an ad campaign encouraging illegal immigrants to go home.
The ad starred — who else? — Kristi Noem, on horseback and in chaps.
The implicit message was that if illegal immigrants didn’t leave on
their own, she’d immediately form a posse and run them over the border.
It was a production worthy of a spaghetti Western, or — more to the
point, given her political ambitions — a commercial for a 2028
presidential campaign.
Noem couldn’t defend the sketchy spending decisions, or the blatantly
self-glorifying ad, or much of anything else in the brutal back-to-back
House and Senate hearings that precipitated her doom.
She’d already been taken down a notch after the Minneapolis ICE operation went sideways. ...
The U.S. military shot down a government drone with a laser-based
anti-drone system, an accident that prompted the Federal Aviation
Administration to bar flights on Thursday in an area around Fort
Hancock, Texas, congressional aides told Reuters.
Congressional
aides told Reuters the Pentagon used the high-energy laser system to
shoot down a Customs and Border Protection drone near the Mexican
border, in an area that often has incursions from Mexican drones used by
drug cartels.
The Pentagon, Federal Aviation Administration and Customs and Border
Protection issued a statement saying the military used a
“counter-unmanned aircraft system ... to mitigate a seemingly
threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace.” ...
CBP deployed the laser technology this month to reportedly take down
four suspected cartel drones, despite warnings from the FAA that the
technology had not been deemed safe to use in the same vicinity as
commercial flights, an aide told Reuters, adding agencies told them the
laser had never before been deployed domestically.
Two weeks ago the military used this laser, and missed!
When you think of it, he shouldn't even be president one minute longer.
... “It's
some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you
don't win the midterms,” Trump said. He boasted that he had accomplished
so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an
election.”
So fast forward to today where we get another chart crime, this one for the consumer price index which omits the month of October, and another dose of skepticism about the Trump Regime's honesty about government data.
They warned us they would do this, too, even though during the first Trump Regime they collected both the employment and the inflation data during the 2018-2019 government shutdown.
This is all deliberate obfuscation.
... Because the October CPI was canceled, Thursday’s report did not have
all the usual data points of a typical CPI release. The BLS said it was
unable to retroactively collect the October data, but did use some
“nonsurvey data sources” to make the index calculations.
Economists
may be hesitant to read too much into this report as the start of a
downward trend in inflation because of the lack of October comparison
data in the release. ...
