Yesterday I featured Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the Administration's skillful use of sleight of hand to take credit for transportation improvements and gains for which they didn't have any skin in the game. They're good at it. Same goes for this...
The Great American Road Trip was unveiled earlier this year as part and parcel of the further celebration of America's Semiquincentennial by inspiring the people to hit the road and travel America to join in the celebration. Previous administrations and Secretaries have produced similar puff pieces and on paper I would not disagree with this conceptually. Who doesn't like a good road trip and fun celebration?
Filmed beforehand and announced after Mr. Trump made his unilateral decision to go to war the timing was somewhat fraught. Considering the impulsive nature of the president, the lack of planning and poor timing shouldn't come as any surprise. With gasoline and diesel north of $4 and $5 a gallon the notion of a road trip was stunningly inopportune and tone deaf. Working-class middle America was priced out of the road trip market.
So the administration held it back. Planned for release three months ago it was put on ice ostensibly for additional editing to comply with government ethics rules. Which is the second problematic issue; Road Trip was underwritten through the generous support of sponsors. Namely the corporate entities that Duffy's Department is supposed to regulate - including $1 Million Platinum Level sponsors including names like Boeing, Toyota, Royal Caribbean,United Airlines and Shell.
Naturally, considering the Trump administration has its hand out for any opportunity to take money from any any well-heeled contributor that might have business before the federal government; with the exception of Presidential Pardons I'm unwilling to characterize this a bribery. All previous administrations have done this at some level; however, considering the level of Trump's personal level of fiscal self-aggrandizement and the brazenness of the Trump organization's efforts this is nothing less than art form. But I digress.
I'll likely catch some flack because I'm a cultural philistine and not a fan of 1990's-style saccharine reality television programming. Even so, if your viewing tastes match the target audience you might want to give it a look. Its family friendly and the advertising is muted; and because it never rose to the interest of network or cable television you can find it over on YouTube. And it can use the viewership.
Venezuela is teetering at the brink and there is money to be made.
The first whiff of this has been what's going on for quite some time in the markets with Venezuelan bonds. Prices of Venezuelan debt securities; including bonds that have been in default since 2017 have doubled in price since the start of the year. Because they're garbage that's not saying much, yet Wall Street is betting that the Trump administration may be successful in ousting Nicolás Maduro and replacing his government with one likely headed by - drum roll please - opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Machado. If successful, this could possibly right the Venezuelan economic ship, lead to debt restructuring and a big payout to bond speculators.
The second whiff is that this is more about oil and little to do with drug smuggling. All of this business of targeting purported narco terrorist drug running boats like a video game is another Trumpian bright shiny object. Both a distraction and mechanism to apply pressure on Maduro. Evidence of this you ask? First-off, fentanyl is made with precursors from China and having been manufactured in Mexico comes to America by land borders; namely Mexico. Secondly, cocaine comes from Columbia, Peru and Bolivia as a consequence of coca leaves being grown in Andean nations. Venezuela has little to do with either fentanyl or cocaine. And if the Navy interdicted and boarded the boats, summarily executed everyone on board and then sank the boats, bodies and cargo the net result is unchanged. The hi-tech, standoff nature of these strikes doesn't reduce the horror of the policy.
It is wrong.
The third whiff is that Donald Trump doesn't want to be bothered by many things including affordability issues for working families and cares little about the drug trade. Evidence of the latter is his absolute pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. You know, the guy tried in an American court and sentenced last year to 45
years in U.S. prison for helping drug traffickers to safely move
hundreds of tons of cocaine north through his country to the U.S. Yes, that guy, the Cocaine Kingpin and wing man to the Sinaloa Cartel's leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias 'El Chapo'. Consider what my Libertarian survivors at the Cato Institute have to say on the subject.
I'm not particularly fond of conspiracy theories but much of this isn't passing the smell test. What I know for sure is that Donald Trump has spent a lifetime running various hustles, grifts and scams; and the position of the Office of the President is a once in a lifetime opportunity to enrich himself and his family. Consequently, a pardon to anyone may result from millions upon tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars washed by means of untraceable Trump Meme Coin, bond profits as a result of regime change and future oil revenues as the cherry on top.
Winning the drug war and building Latin American democracies have nothing to do with it. Our government has a long and sordid history of failing at both.
To be fair, I also have a sketchy record of predictions; nevertheless, Latin American leaders such as Columbia's President Gustavo Petro suggest that - Oil is at the heart of the matter. And Venezuela possesses the world's largest proven oil reserves.
Data shows estimates of proven oil reserves for 2025
Source: Oil & Gas Journal
Moreover, Trump's candidness is usually a clear insight into his intentions. In September of 2016 nominee Donald Trump said repeatedly the United States should take Iraq's oil as the spoils of war.
At a 2023 political rally Donald Trump lamented in a speech that his first administration had been close to 'taking over' Venezuela for its oil reserves. Venezuela. How about we're buying oil from Venezuela? When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door.
Trump's administration has previously used sanctions on the Venezuelan state oil company - Petróleos de Venezuela - (PDVSA) as a tool to apply pressure, at times revoking or reissuing licenses for U.S. companies like Chevron to operate there. Naturally, internal political instability, mismanagement, international sanctions along with the built-in inefficiencies of a state-run enterprise in a socialist country has resulted in wide-reaching problems requiring complex arrangements with foreign firms like Chevron to operate joint ventures under restrictions imposed by both Venezuela and the U.S.
Notably, U.S. refiners are expertly-equipped to process Venezuela's heavy, sour crude and the country's location makes it a strategically valuable resource as with the passage of time our own domestic production will likely level-off.
And because I hold any number of energy producers as a direct shareholder, including Chevron, this tangent has caught my interest. Besides, if Venezuela cannot someone has to do it.
The Trump administration has officially framed its actions - including a military build-up that includes moving roughly fifteen percent of our Navy to the Gulf of Mexico - as an effort to stop drug trafficking and illegal migration from Venezuela. This complex mix of national security concerns are likely superseded by the President's own comments and equally complex economic interests related to Wall Street and Venezuela's oil wealth.
Seems to me that at first blush MAGA world seems to have embraced and endorsed regime change and the profits that will undoubtedly follow by means of military force; or at a minimum, the threat thereof.
Who knew?
I'm willing to be wrong about all of this. Time will tell.....
In a retaliatory move, president Trump threatens 100% tariffs on Chinese goods. The
president made the threat after Beijing imposed new global restrictions
on the use of rare earth minerals, which are vital supplies for U.S.
makers of chips and batteries.
Just curious how many Trump family members and cronies shorted the market before his tantrum?
On a serious note, restrictions of rare earth minerals is a big deal with all sorts of implications. Canada holds some of the world's largest known reserves of rare earth
elements (REEs), with an estimated 15.2 million tons of rare earth
oxide in 2023. Unfortunately, very little of this is being developed. Rather than working co-cooperatively with our friendly neighbors to the north our president has adopted an adversarial and belittling attitude towards
Canada; creating unprecedented resentment toward his administration by
Canadians. Naturally, what do I know?
This is revealing of the administration's lack of coherence on this subject. And the only response is a Trumpian fit of pique and threatened tariffs?
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