China’s weak economy and record US production will lead to a surplus of one million barrels of oil a day next year, IEA says

Surely, Trump won’t dishonestly take credit for this.

“The oil market could see a major supply glut in 2025 thanks to booming production from non-OPEC states like the US and sagging demand in China, according to the International Energy Agency.
The IEA said in its November Oil Market Report that the world’s oil market is on track for a one-million barrel-a-day surplus next year.

The excess is largely being driven by a weakening economy in China. Demand for oil in the world’s second-largest economy contracted for six straight months in a row as of September, IEA data shows. This accounted for the “main drag” on demand this year, the report said.

Meanwhile, the agency is predicting strong oil production among non-OPEC producers led by countries like US, Guyana, Argentina, and Brazil.

Altogether, non-OPEC producers are on track to expand oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day, it estimated. That amount is more than the agency’s forecast for world oil consumption to grow by 990,000 barrels a day next year.”

“The US has become the largest oil producer in the world, pumping out more crude than any other country in history for the last six years in a row, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Domestic production hit a record 13.4 million barrels a day in August, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.”

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/chinas-weak-economy-record-us-042533492.html

UN officials plan to charm Stefanik

“Stefanik is a onetime moderate Republican who has transformed herself into a pro-Trump loyalist. She stood up for Trump relentlessly when he faced impeachment.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/11/un-officials-charm-stefanik-trump-00188868

Aftermath of Trump’s win eclipses Chinese solar project in Texas

“Trina Solar was in line to receive nearly $1.8 billion in tax credits under President Joe Biden’s climate law, as one of several Chinese solar businesses setting up factories in the United States to benefit from the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. But President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to dismember Biden’s climate agenda, and has called for taking a hard line against economic competition from China.

Trina said Trump’s victory had “nothing to do” with the sale of the factory near Dallas to the Georgia-based battery manufacturer Freyr.

“Rather, it is based on the company’s long-term growth in the country,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

But analysts said the news illustrated the impact of Trump’s victory on energy markets.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/11/chinese-solar-giant-america-biden-windfall-trump-00188598

Iran ordered an operative to assassinate Trump before the election, federal prosecutors say

“The Iranian government ordered an operative to assassinate Donald Trump before the 2024 election, Manhattan federal prosecutors said Friday, the latest in a string of assassination plots directed at the former and future president in recent months.
Prosecutors charged Farhad Shakeri with murder-for-hire and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He is believed to be in Iran and remains at large, prosecutors said.”

“According to a criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court, Shakeri said during an FBI interview that in September he was directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran to surveil and kill Trump, whom the charging papers identify as “Victim-4.”

When Shakeri told an IRGC official that doing so would prove expensive, the official responded that “money’s not an issue,” which Shakeri “understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4’s assassination,” according to the charging papers.

One month later, on Oct. 7, according to prosecutors, the IRGC ordered Shakeri to put forward a plan to assassinate Trump within one week and, if that proved impossible, to pause the plan until after Election Day, because the IRGC assumed Trump would lose, making him easier to kill. According to the complaint, Shakeri claimed in the FBI interview that he didn’t “intend to propose a plan to murder” Trump within the timeframe dictated by the IRGC official.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/08/donald-trump-iran-assassination-plot-00188498

Say goodbye to Trump’s legal cases

“his victory virtually guarantees that he will never face serious legal accountability for an avalanche of alleged wrongdoing.”

“Even the civil cases against him will now face new obstacles. Presidents can, in some circumstances, be subject to civil penalties from private lawsuits, but Trump will surely try to use the cloak of the presidency to avoid paying the hundreds of millions of dollars he owes in judgments for sexual abuse, defamation and corporate fraud.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/06/trump-win-what-next-legal-cases-00187635

Why Susie Wiles Is So Good at Managing Donald Trump

“She doesn’t seek or attract attention.
She has a hand and a say in just about everything he does and every decision that’s made. I talked to more than 100 people for the profile I wrote earlier this year, and there’s some disagreement about how exactly she does that. But there’s no debate whatsoever about her constitutional allergy to the limelight.

Since Donald Trump became the dominant figure in American politics, nobody has been this important and this close to him in this role for this long. Nobody. That she’s going to be his chief of staff is news in only the most technical sense — because in reality it’s simply a continuation of what she’s been to him for the last four years. And in 2016 and 2020, too, she helmed his Florida operation.”

“She’s in the past described herself as “a moderate on the political spectrum” but she talks as much about disposition as ideology. “I come from a very traditional background. In my early career things like manners mattered and there was an expected level of decorum,” she told me earlier this year. “And so I get it that the GOP of today is different. There are changes we must live with in order to get done the things we’re trying to do.” There’s certainly a way to see and study the evolution of the Republican Party over the last half-century through the lens of her long career. So what does she believe? She believes in working and working hard for the person she’s working for. She believes in being valuable to the principal.”

“There’s a legitimate mutual respect. He listens to her. She brings to the rooms she’s in with him a certain equanimity. They’re in many ways very, very different, but they also recognize something in each other. She’s smart, she’s competitive, and she can be, in her own out-of-the-way, soft-spoken, “who, me?” manner, pretty cutthroat. There’s a yin-and-yang component to the two of them: Trump reads the stage directions — he’s all text and no subtext — and she’s essentially the utter opposite. I’m tempted to say he needs her and he knows it. Maybe more to the point, though, they need each other.

She’s clear-eyed about the terms of engagement. She doesn’t control him — nobody controls him — and she doesn’t try. But strategically, temperamentally, even psychologically, she can try to help him, advise him, guide him. And it doesn’t work all the time — she very clearly hasn’t made Trump someone or something he’s not — but it can and does work some of the time.

I’m thinking here about something she once told me about her mother: “She woke up an optimist every day, and she started every day like that, and it would fall apart or it wouldn’t …”

There are multiple definitions of the word I’m about to use and I think in her case they all apply.

Susie manages.”

“She’s not just a calming presence. She’s an experienced operator. And she’s no stranger to the dark arts. She’s a savvy source-builder in the intersecting worlds of politics and media and has been for years quite effective at shaping perceptions that help clients and hurt opponents.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/08/trumps-chief-of-staff-susie-wiles-00188467

‘People Are In for a Really Rude Shock’ on Trump’s Economy

Trump’s proposals will be net inflationary.

His plans increase the deficit, which is inflationary.

Large and broad tariffs are inflationary.

A massive crackdown on illegal immigration will also be inflationary as without cheap labor, making products will be more expensive or won’t happen here at all–particularly agricultural goods and housing.

Trump wants to end the independence of the Federal Reserve. Trump has been in favor of lower interest rates, which will increase inflation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7s8QizovG8

Trump transition figure warns DOJ lawyers: Get on board or get out

“A conservative lawyer working on Donald Trump’s transition, Mark Paoletta, offered a stark warning to career Justice Department lawyers Monday that those who refuse to advance Trump’s agenda should resign or face the possibility of being fired.
“Once the decision is made to move forward, career employees are required to implement the President’s plan,” Paoletta wrote in a post on X responding to a POLITICO story detailing widespread fear among DOJ lawyers about being asked to advance or defend policies they consider unethical or illegal.

“If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave,” Paoletta said. “Those employees who engage in so-called ‘resistance’ against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy. … [t]hose that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination.””

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/11/11/congress/mark-paoletta-justice-department-lawyers-00188772