Donald Trump on Monday weighed in on a dizzying array of issues in a disjointed barrage of morning tweets, spanning Mueller, Obama, Netflix, Brett Kavanaugh, China’s economy, the Fed and, of course, the attacks on Saudi Arabia.
“Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years, we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number One Energy Producer in the World”, Trump declared.
He then thanked himself on your behalf (“thank you, Mr. President!”).
Having set the stage, the president reminded everyone that regardless of who’s blowing up what in the desert, “we don’t need Middle Eastern Oil & Gas & in fact have very few tankers there”.
The US became the world’s number one oil exporter in June, leapfrogging the Saudis, according to the IEA (gross export figures). In December, the US became a net oil exporter for the first time in 75 years.
That might suggest that Trump isn’t all that interested in getting sucked into a war with Iran, but not so fast. “We will help our Allies!”, he shrieked, in a loud caveat to his bragging about America’s energy renaissance.
The president then did a hard pivot to PPI deflation in China. “Producer prices in China shrank most in 3 years due to China’s big devaluation of their currency, coupled with monetary stimulus”, he tweeted, in a hilarious non sequitur, that paved the way for the first of what will almost surely be many Fed tweets this week. Here are a series of questions, declarations, observations and lamentations from the White House:
Federal Reserve not watching? Will Fed ever get into the game? Dollar strongest EVER! Really bad for exports. No Inflation…Highest Interest Rates…
Those are not spliced together. That is one tweet, verbatim.
Trump then brought it all together – sort of.
“The United States, because of the Federal Reserve, is paying a MUCH higher Interest Rate than other competing countries”, he said, insisting that America’s trade partners “can’t believe how lucky they are that Jay Powell & the Fed don’t have a clue”.
If you’re wondering what the connection to the Saudi attacks is, Trump is glad you implicitly asked. “And now, on top of it all, the Oil hit”, he said, before capping it off with this:
Big Interest Rate Drop, Stimulus!
It’s not entirely clear how this all fits together, but for the crazy badgers who live in the president’s brain and whisper to him all day, the above represents a coherent assessment of the prevailing macro environment, and like all of Trump’s macro musings, Monday’s missives lead him to one inescapable conclusion: rate cuts. Bigly rate cuts.
