This is America's Trucking Network with Kevin Gordon. Welcome more.
Thanks for tuning in on this Thursday morning. I get to start off with saying that, well, yesterday, when I got off the air, I thought that I had said something wrong, so I went back and checked it, and actually I was right. So I was wrong about being wrong. Which what does that do? It actually makes me right right, So a good thing. I didn't have to correct it because you know that would lose you would lose faith in me, because you know, on this program atn we're never wrong.
So good thing. I didn't misspeak yesterday.
And I when I thought I was wrong, I was actually wrong about being wrong, So I guess it was right. You know, last week we talked about this government shut down, all these scare tactic tactics that everybody were going to be using, and one of the big things that they brought up was, well, you know, although social Security checks are going to be coming out, that's not going to
be affected. But whatever the annual cola that cost of living index or cost of living allowance is adjusted, is going to be pushed back some and it may not get there by January. Now, mind you Okay, we're not in the age of you know, calculators and pencils and people having you do things manually. I made the comment at the time that you know, you make a credit card payment online and immediately, within seconds, the money's out of your account. Certainly they have got some mechanism that
they can make this adjustment. And they talked about during that particular story that normally the adjustment last year came out on October the tenth, and that the government shut down, it wasn't due to be released until the fifteenth of
this month, which is today, no yesterday. And so I mentioned at the time that even if it's delayed a few days, because most of these government shutdowns, the longest one was during the first Trump administration with the Democrats in charge, and that lasted for thirty five days, We're already into what three and a half weeks, so this should be ending pretty shortly.
But I mentioned that, you know, this is just scare tactics.
And the way the headline was written, and I've talked about this before, is that people generally, or there's a lot of people that all they do is they look
at the headlines on their phones. They don't dig into the stories the way we do here on America's truck A Network, pick apart the stories, dissect them, and come up with the nuggets of journalism that's been committed within the story buried however, but we've dug them out and talked about it, and in some cases we pointed out that sometimes the last paragraph of the story pretty much
negates everything that was said during the regular story. And I've brought up several times that the headline doesn't even match the story. So when we were digging into this details last week talking about this, the headline and as I said, most people will just be.
Looking at the headlines.
The headline said government shutdown could delay yearly Social Security payment announcement. Now, because there's limited space on your phone in terms of the sentences, they may have cut that off. Now, in some instances, when you look at Google and they kind of do an explanation of what the stories are, sometimes the last word or two are left off. Government shutdown could delay yearly Social Security payment. That might be
what some people just saw. So they would be going, oh my god, you know, so security is going to be delayed, And I said, you know, let's be calm about this.
They've got other ways. In fact, all they have to do is take.
The average from the beginning of the year up to It'll be one month short. But take that average and use that well low And be hold all the handwringing, all the stuff that was last week that oh, this is going to be delayed. We don't know if this is going to get into effect by January. The effect that the checks may not be adjusted. They'll have to go back and adjust.
That later on. Well, no, okay.
New Social Security cola release date confirmed amid government shutdown. The announcement of the Social Security annual inflation adjustment to benefits has been delayed due to the government shutdown, but the agency responsible for handling the benefits increase has set a date for releasing the data next week. SOBI Security benefits undergo a cost of living adjustment COLA, as it's called, every year, which updates benefits amounts to account for inflation
over the last year. The size of the annual cola is determined by the rise in the consumer price index over the prior year.
And again, if they're.
Having problems with this, you already have January February, already have through the month of September. Well, yeah, August at least, so you got at least eight months worth of data, or maybe a and a half months worth of data.
If you have a.
Problem with that, that's right, because this Consumer Price Index comes out the middle of the month, so we already had September, so she got nine months of the year. Take the average of that, or take the number of that and use that that tenth month is going to make that big of a difference. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the CPI on a monthly basis to gauge how
much higher inflation has pushed the consumer prices. However, the September CPI data that was supposed to be released October the fifteenth and complete the COLA calculation was delayed by the government shutdown. BLS announced it had recalled some of the workers who were furloughed due to the government shutdown to complete the CPI report and allow COLA to be released. The BLS will now release the September CPI on Friday, October the twenty fourth, while the Social Security Administration will
announce the twenty twenty six COLA the same day. Experts anticipate now this is what's interesting, which really wouldn't have changed if you would have taken the last CPI report where inflation was somewhere between two point seven and two point nine percent. If you were to used that number, that's exactly where they're going to be at. Experts expect that the twenty twenty six COLA will raise Social Security recipient's benefits payments by more than two point five percent.
Senior Citizens League estimated last month that the COLA for twenty twenty six will be two point seven t Let me see. T SLC noted that the estimate in higher than what was PROMOTE projected in the outset of the year, when it was estimated would be two point one percent. The group also noted that two point seven COLA would be about average of what the historical standpoint, So if it was two point six two point seven, some are
estimating its as high as two point nine percent. They knew this before the September data would even come out. And why they did all the hand ringing, why they did all the I don't know, trying to scare people, scare tactics put pre well, if they would put pressure on the Democrats to end the Schumer shutdown. That would be good, that would be good for the country, good for us. But quite honestly, have many people notice that
the government has been shut down. I know there's been some things in talking about certain things going out as far as health premiums and insurance subsidies and that type of thing, but that's.
All going to be worked out. That could be worked out a different way.
So all these scare tactics they've been talking about, at least they're not in office and creating headaches for us during the government shutdown. So I just thought it was interesting that we talked about this just last week, talked about how that this isn't that big a deal, that there are numbers that they can use and are available that they could use and just implement that. And if they're implementing it, and if their system is up to date, it shouldn't take two and a half months to make
an adjustment on those security payments. So bottom line, once again, America's truck A network is far ahead of the curve. We had this information last week, talked about it not big deal. Now all of a sudden Wednesday, actually Thursday, well yesterday of this week, they finally get around to saying, oh, whoops, never mind, it's just spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media.
They always got to glom onto something. And as I've been saying all along, it appears as though that the mainstream media, the spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media, and certain people I think within the Federal Reserve, are trying to manufacture a recession. And fortunately for you, me and everybody else in this country, we are way too smart, way too resilient to get through that or to allow that to happen, and we will push through because we
are tough, rugged individualists. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's truck a network seven hundred WLW. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's truck in
Networks seven hundred WLW. Well, it looks as though that even though there's a government shut down, and even though the government well isn't open, which means that it's not creating headaches for you and me, there are per people within the administration that are taking a look and have been taking a look at projects and things since the beginning of the year and making a termination of do we really need to be spending money on this kind
of stuff. There was a report at the I think last week, the Department of Energy and seven point five billion dollars in grants. Now, seven point five billion dollars in grants may not seem a lot in terms of if we're talking about trillion dollar deficits. However, as I forget who it was, they were on either the Carson Show or one of these shows way back when, and
they were talking about the budget. They were talking about spending and government and the federal government and so on, and this guy says, you know, a million dollars and back then a million dollars right, as opposed to billions of dollars now a million dollars here and a billion dollars, million dollars there.
Sooner or later it adds up to a little bit. It adds up to some money.
Well, you know, when you're looking at the bloated government and the fact that every year, and I've talked about this before, Ran Paul Senator from Kentucky, every year around towards the end of December comes up with what they call the Festivus Report, where he goes down very various items that have come to his attention or stuff that they look at things he's picked out of the budget, waste, fraud,
and abuse, and he puts those in a report. Last year's report was one point one trillion dollars in cuts of wasteful spend by the federal government, the Office of Management, Management and Budget, the Congressional Budget Office, these different agencies, the Inspector General's Report periodically come up with these lists of stuff that's being spent and what it's being spent on.
And it's always a punchline or as part of a joke that people do, as opposed to saying, you know, when somebody says, well, you know, they spent this kind of money on this report, and isn't that just stupid? And rather than saying, you know what, call your congressman, call your senators, say what the hell are you guys doing?
Why is this in the budget? Why are you reaching into my pocket?
Why are you confiscating my taxes and spending you know, eleven million dollars on circumcisions in Zimbabwe, I mean, for crying out loud, I mean we have veterans living on the street, we have senior citizens that are struggling, We have army veterans that can't get the health care.
That they properly needed.
They are the ones that fought and died for this country, and yet we're spending billions and billions of dollars and in some cases trillions of dollars on other social programs that are just wasteful, that can show no actual progress in terms of what problem they're trying to solve. And we've talked about on this program a number of times. I mean, you're out there on the road every day. You see how the roads have deteriorated. I made a mention a couple well, about.
Two years ago.
I used to go back and forth between Cincinnati and Louisville on a fairly regular basis. Not I wouldn't say, you know, every week, every month, and every couple of months, i'd find myself going down to Louisville. And once you get, you know, to a certain area, I mean, it's clear sailing, it's really nice. But I hadn't gone down to Louisville for about I guess it was about two years, and I had to go down Louisville for something, and I
was absolutely shocked. I thought it was I thought it was in a Connostoga wagon going through the wagon wheel ruts trying to avoid the potholes, and some of those things were like, you know, teeth chattering potholes, and I can you know when you see that and you know how much money goes into the Department of Transportation, goes into the Federal Highway Trust Fund, and then you realize that thirty three percent of that money is wasted on another project.
We pointed out one the other day of where you know.
The FMCSA, the salaries and wages of the FMCSA comes.
Out of that budget.
Department of Energy comes out of the regular taxes that are paid, the Department of Education comes out of the regular taxes that are paid. But the FMCSA that comes out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund. The money that we pay as a result of our gasoline tax, diesel taxes, excise taxes on your tractors, your trailers, the you know semis going down the street on your tires and so on.
So all these excise taxes we've been told goes into the Highway Trust Fund that are supposed to repair our bridges and roads, that that money is going to be funded by that. No, they pull money out to fund the North What was it Northeast Corridor, that train that runs from basically Washington, d C. And New York up into Connecticut, New Hampshire and Delaware and so on, so that people can commute on the train, take a forty five fifty minute ride to get out of the city.
But we're subsidizing that. Why are we subsidizing something that is not the highway, something that is not bridges and roads and stuff like that. Why are we subsidizing that? Why are we subsidizing hiking and biking trails that comes out of the Highway Trust Fund.
Not opposed to hiking and biking.
Trails, But by god, if they can tax us for our tires, tax us for our gasoline, taxes for our diesel, can't they put some sort of a tax on the bike helmets, the bike gloves, the bicycles themselves, the tires on the bicycles, and put a little bit of money aside to build these hiking trails, biking trails and so on. Look at all the equipment that goes into the hiking boots, the socks, there's certain shorts, there's walking sticks, all this kind of stuff that's done.
They could tax that.
They could put a small price on that and then fund these things.
Instead of us. Because again when.
They're told, you know, when you're going through these highways and you come upon a toll, they are told they are tolling that road because they didn't have the money in order to fix that road or to build that road. And they're saying, well, it's a user fee, you use it, you pay for it. Well, if you're using the biking trail, and you're using the hiking trail, or you're using the train going up to Connecticut, that's the same train that Joe Biden bragged about using every.
Day so he could go home to his family. Applaud him for that being home for his kids.
That's probably one of the nicest things I can say about it, and the only nice thing. But again, we're subsidizing those trips for those commuters going to and from work. Who's subsidizing aren't who's subsidizing our gas and oil?
It's not anybody else. We're paying for that.
And then to have this money pulled out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund is ridiculous. Again, it's they tell us the tolls are a user fee, all right, Well, then put a user fee on the hiking trails and
biking trails. Don't put that, don't take that out of the Highway Trust Fund, and quit whining to us the fact that you don't have enough money to repair these resident Oh, by the way, let's not forget that when the highway system went into place in the first place, back in nineteen fifty six during the during the Eisenhower administration, after he saw during World War Two what the autobahn did in Germany from the troops being able to be moved from one end of the country to the other,
and recognize that in the United States, if you're going from one end of the country to the other, it would take you two and a half to three weeks, two and a half to three weeks from going from the east coast to the West coast, or vice versa. He recognized what a that was, especially going into the Cold War, said we're going to develop the Federal Highway Fund or the Federal Highway System, and it was put as the National Defense System and Highway Fund, and so
this was part of the federal government. The federal government at that time paid ninety percent of the cost of the Federal Highway interstate highway system and if they recognized that that was a national security issue, why isn't part of the money coming out of the Defense Fund to repair repair bridge and bridges and roads. Why isn't that still part of the federal the Defense Fund. We've got the Highway Trust Fund which can do that as well.
But again, the government at the time recognized the importance of this not only for troop movement, but then also as a side benefit, a benefit to the consumers out there, so that they could travel from one end of the country to the other in a short period of time and enjoy more of leisure life in terms of their family vacationations and stuff. And how much that opened up in terms of being able to spend time with their
family going to different places. I mean, if you live in Michigan and you can go all the way to Florida in a couple of days as opposed to a four or five day trip down there, at benefited us in terms of our leisure time. So the fact that they recognized this at the time should be something that they recognize today. So again, all this stuff, as far as these projects and this money being spent, is unbelievable.
And we'll get back to what I was.
Going to talk about in the first place, this seven point five billion dollars in grants that have been pulled back. I'm Kevin Gordon, america'struck a Network, seven hundred WLW.
Here's your trucking forecast for the Try State and the rest of the country and the Try State. Over Night, partly cloudy, the low down to forty eight Sunday, Thursday high of sixty nine mostly Sunday. Friday high of seventy one Saturday, mostly sunny with a slight chance of afternooner and warmer Ahia eight two. Rain moves in overnight and
continues into Sunday. Nationally, heavy snow will be seen uper parts of the Northern Rockies Thursday, while there is a chance of showers and storms upper parts of the Northern Plains, of the Southern Plains and Upper Great Lakes region Wednesday and Thursday.
Seven hundred WLW.
I this is America's Hello, seven hundred w LW's Americans Tracking Network.
I'm Gavin Gordon.
By the way, programming no Thursday night football game Bengals are on. They're playing Pittsburgh Steelers, so we will be preempted tomorrow. So there will be no Friday show. By the way, if you miss any of our programs, make sure you hit up that iHeartRadio app of course, brought to you by our friends at Rush Truck Centers.
I was talking about this particular story.
Department of Energy ends seven point five billion dollars in grants for Biden approved projects. Department of Energy terminated seven point five billion dollars in grants for two hundred and twenty three projects approved by the Biden administration. Imagine how many roads and bridges or something that that could fund, or benefits for veterans who are out on the street, housing for homeless veterans, and so on. Seven point five
billion dollars has not jump change. On day one, the Energy Department began a critical task of reviewing billions of dollars of financial awards. This, according to Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary looked at critical task of reviewing billions of dollars of financial awards many rushed through the final months of the Biden administration with inadequate documentation by any reasonable
business standard. President Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars, expand America's supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy today's cancelations deliver on that commitment. Rest assured the Energy Department will continue reviewing awards.
To ensure that every dollar works for the American people.
Wright's office stated that twenty six percent of the projects worth more than three point one billion dollars were awarded between election day and inauguration day. I'm sorry, my friends that once the election was determined and we knew who the new president was going to be, there should have been damn little that was shoved through in terms of additional spending or grants issued between election day and inauguration day.
To me that and follow the money is probably a bunch of payoffs to a bunch of cronies.
The total of three hundred and twenty one financial.
Awards were approved under the Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy, the offices of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fossil Energy, grid Deployment, Manufacturing, and Energy supply Grants. I mean, there is so much redundancy in the federal government that every little department has to have their little section of the pie. And the more that they can grow these things,
the more power that they get for themselves. And this is some of the things that need to be looked at. And as I mentioned before, Rand Paul Festivus Report every year is put out. Last year they came up with one point one trillion dollars in just those deductions alone, or those eliminations from.
The federal budget.
That would prove to be amazing Office of Management and Budget Inspector General's report they go through every year in issue reports of waste, fraud and abuse. And again to reemphasize what I said in the previous segment, rather than that being a punchline, rather than that being a ha ha moment as opposed to an aha moment where people say, you know what I need to We need to put our you know, harass our federal agencies to eliminate this.
Crap that's coming out of our pockets.
But anyway, going back to this particular story, I don't want to get off on a tangent again. The governors of Washington and California amazing, amazing, amazing, surprise, surprise, surprise that a lot of these energy grants went to the liberal state of Washington and oh, by the way, California, which is you know how liberal they are. Washington Governor Bob Ferguson blasted the Trump administration for stopping one point
one billion dollars for seven Department of Energy grants. The previously authorized federal awards included one billion dollars for the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, as well as sixty eight million dollars for two pack Car Inc. Projects linked to the Super Truck three program. Now, the super Truck three is an electric vehicle, and as we've seen, electric vehals are not ready for Electric vehicles are not ready for prime time. The infant structure isn't there, the number of charging stations
aren't there. And when you take in take into consideration the weight of these vehicles, the fact that electric tractor trailers are the cabs themselves weigh a third more than what the normal cab weighs. So if you're hauling freight, you can only you would be hauling one third less freight.
So for every one of these trucks electric trucks that you'd buy, you need one point three trucks in order to carry the same weight, not to mention the fact that the normal tractor costs between one hundred and eighty and two hundred and thirty two twenty thousand dollars. The cost of an electric Class eight truck is four hundred and twenty five thousand dollars, almost twice the cost of
a regular truck. And when you look into okay, all right, if you buy the nonsense that an electric vehicle is a lot cleaner than a regular vehicle, well you got to take into consideration to wear and tear on the roads. You're talking about more weight and breaking down the roads a little lot more so, the construction equipment, everything necessary in order to repair that road is going to be a carbon footprint. The fact that you're charging these stations
and what are you charging these stations with electricity? And where are you getting that electricity? You're going you're not going to do it by solar panels. You're not going to be doing by windmills because they have proven to be very inefficient and not reliable. So you're going to be burning more coal. You're gonna have to be producing more electricity. So where is the offset that they're talking about. Again, it's not ready for prime time, and to cancel these
contracts is not in my opinion. Now, when it comes to hydrogen, I have seen a lot of things having to do with hydrogen. It appears as though that that might be something that could be done in the future.
But again, when I see all of these different projects going out there, you would think that if you're developing something new, that there would be some sort of like a what do you want a clearinghouse, if you will, in terms of well if somebody else, if somebody's over here doing this experiment, you don't want to subsidize and fund somebody over here doing the same experiment.
You want to have some cross negotiation there.
But one of the things that we learned as you pull back the curtain on the pandemic and what was done as far as some of these vaccines are concerned, and some of the scientific technology way back when Fauci had it put through that some of these patents that are done are then the property of that person or that institution like a college or a university that develops that item, and then they get the royalties from that.
So US as the tax subsidize this research, the research is developed, and then they get the royalties from that that doesn't pass through to US to reimburse US for the grant. And so instead of collaboration, people are tight knit, we're not going to share our information with somebody else, because if they get to the finish line before us, we're not going to get our share of the pie. And so the same thing I think is probably done
with these hydrogen experiments and stuff that's being done. And again, it might be the wave of the future, and it may be something that is very cost productive in the future. But again, unless there is some sort of a clearinghouse or some sort of an overseeing of this to make sure that it has done efficiently efficiently, I'm not so
sure about it. And of course Gavin Newsom is whining about technical centers in California that they're not getting their share of the pie termination of one point two billion dollars from the Department of Energy State Hydrogen Fund. And let's not forget the billions and billions and hundreds of billions of dollars that they've wasted on this high speed rail system out there where they haven't even laid a
track yet and they're what five times over budget. Anyway, the efficiencies in California, I'm not so sure that money pouring into California for any kind of research grant is going to get us anything that what we need.
I'm Kevin coming up.
We've got to talk a little bit about We've got to get to oil and gas prices.
I haven't talked about that in a number of days.
I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network, seven hundred WLW. This is America's struck in Network, seven one hundred WLW. I'm and Kevin Gordon. Let's take a look at oil and gas prices. We have not talked about this much over the last week or so. There's just been too much news and too much other things going on. So before we get to the Fed minutes and talk about inflation and so on, let's look at oil and gas prices currently. West this intermediate crued is it fifty eight dollars and
forty cents a barrel? That is down thirty cents thirty cents from yesterday, or a half a percentage point. Brent krude currently is at sixty two dollars and two cents of barrel. That is down thirty seven cents or point five nine, a little over half a percentage point just since January the twenty, is when Trump took office. West Texas intermediate creued is down eighteen dollars and forty nine cents. That's a twenty four percent decrease. Twenty four percent decrease.
That doesn't lower energy prices. I don't know what will Brent krude. Currently is it, as I said, sixty two dollars and two cents. Just since January it is down seventeen dollars in eighty eight cents a barrel, or twenty two percentage points. Gasoline is starting to fall finally come down, not as much as I would like to have had to see it come down. I think gas prices should actually right now be about ten to fifteen percent less than what they are. The current national average right now
is at three dollars and seven cents a gallon. Now that is offset by the fact that in California, their gasoline average price in the state of California is four dollars and sixty five cents a gallon. That is a dollar fifty nine higher than the national average because of all their regulations, all of their additives, all of their special gas blends there, and all the taxes that they put on gasoline out there, which I don't know why
the people in California tolerate that. You've got a high in California four dollars and sixty five cents a gallon to a low of two dollars and fifty eight cents a gallon in Oklahoma. National average is three dollars and seven cents of gallon. Back in twenty twenty, when we are energy independent for the first time since nineteen forty nine, gasoline was down around two dollars and twenty four cents
a gallon. We are thirty seven percent higher than that number if you shave off and fifteen percent off of the gasoline prices, and they are coming down. We got the summer blends that we're in there during the summer, and now that summer is over and into the fall, those summer blends and that additives that go in there reduce the cost of gasoline, and we start should start
seeing that at the pump. What we do have is a little bit of maintenance that goes on this time of the year at the end of the driving season because the demand for gasoline is not that much, and so they start doing their maintenance on these refineries. But when you take into consideration that refineries in this country, which is something that needs to be done and needs to be done very soon, because we have not built a new refinery in this country, a new refinery in over fifty years.
Every one of the.
Refiners we've had refinery shut down because when they go in to do maintenance, sort to do expansion, or to do additions to that, then it's almost like they've been told that they have to revamp everything and bring that up to what the current standards would be. And so in order to do that, it's not cost efficient to do that. That's why a lot of this refining has been done overseas and then import it into the United States, which again is not a very cost effective way of
doing gasoline. And it's been this situation where for as long as I can remember, they've been talking about ending the internal combustion engine. We've been talking about, oh, we need to clean the environment, we need to lower the we need to increase the mileage standards and all this. And yet because there's been such a pressure on trying to kill the oil industry, they're saying, well, shoot, I mean, we're not going to invest more money into this country.
We're not going to invest more money into refineries.
If in a five, six, seven, eight year period of time, they're going to be shut down.
They have been pushed out.
Of the market in California, and now all of a sudden in California, looking at their prices going up dramatically all of a sudden, Gavin knew him as saying, well, you know what, maybe we should reopen way, maybe we should open refineries here. Well, if that's the case, Gavin, why did you close them in the first place or chase them out of the state. So our energy policy in terms of oil refining and that needs to have
a strong look at it. And again with our oil prices and gas prices being as high as they, well, the oil price is coming down, the gasoline needs to follow that. The fact that again we're thirty seven percent higher than we were back in twenty twenty, again when we were energy independent for the first time since nineteen forty nine. We need to get back to the point of where we are energy dominant to keep these prices down.
And the policies of the Trump administration have been pushing and because we have a good relationship and he has a good relationship with some of the members of OPEC, as you saw the other day when he went to Egypt after addressing the Israeli kannesse It. When the hostages were returned, he then flew to Egypt to this conference with the different Arab groups to in order to make
sure that they put forth a piece plan themselves. And so with the benefits that he has there and with the warm relationship that he has with the folks there, Opek has been behaving themselves and keeping the energy production up and their volumes that they're doing have increased, which some are estimating that by next year we are going to actually have an oil glut, which is one of the reasons when you have a lot of supply and demand stays the same, and if your supply goes up,
that actual cost goes down because the demand remains the same. And that's one of the reasons why oil prices are as low as they are, and they're trying to contain their or maintain their dominance. Oil prices dipped on Wednesday, holding near a five month low for the second day, pressured by escalating US China trade tensions and the International
Energy Agency's prediction of supply surplus. In twenty twenty six, Bank of America said Brent prices could dip below fifty dollars a barrel if US China trade tensions intensify, while OPEC plus production ramps up again. The Saudis and OPEC Plus because as a favor, to let's face it, Trump
administration in Israel took out Iran's nuclear capabilities. They were the bully of the Mid East and everybody was in fear of them, and so they were doing certain things that were kind of more I guess favorable to Iran. Now that they don't have to worry about that, they are relieved that this potential of an adversary there with a nuke they don't have to worry about. So of course they're going to be ramping up their production in
order to help the economy of the United States. On Tuesday, the IEA said the global oil market could face a surplus next year of up to four million barrels per day, wider than the previous forecast, as OPEC Plus and others raise output in demand remains sluggish. The trade dispute between the world's two largest oil consumers has reignited over the last week, with US and China imposing additional port fees on ships carrying cargo between them. The tip for tat
moves could disrupt oil freight flows. US Traasury Secretary Scott Besson on Wednesday insisted that Washington did not want to escalate the trade conflict, stressing that President Donald Trump is ready to meet with Chinese President Jizing Ping North in South Korea later this month. That was an on again, off again thing. Oh, we're not going to meet. Yes, we are going to meet. The fact that they are
going to meet is a good sign. Last week, China announced that would increase rare earth export controls and Trump threatened to raise tariffs. Deflationary pressure persisted in China, with both consumer and producer prices falling in September as a prolonged property market slump and trade tensions also weighed on their economy, and the US investors are becoming more convinced that the Federal Reserve are going to be freeing up interest rates.
China's economy being such.
A closed society over there, and we don't get a whole lot of news, but the people that are close to that and watching that their economy is not as strong as they would like to project to the world, and the fact that putting sanctions on Russia and China being the largest purchaser of Russian oil. With that not
being available, they are suffering. In the past, they've been trying to stockpile oil, which in my opinion, what they're trying to do is stockpile oil so that they can go on some sort of a nation building if you will, or put pressure on some of the other countries to Taiwan to take them over. So keeping them in check and their economy not being as strong is and recognize that and keep putting pressure on them will make the
world a heck of a lot safer. So again, China is not nearly as strong economically as everybody would like to think, and some of the pressure that's being put on by the Trump administration is having a drastic effect on them. Even though they are vague at and again, they're always looking for a way of you know, because the Oriental mind, they have to save face. So you're
constantly in a battle back and forth. But then when you've got the upper hand, you've got to figure out a way that they can save face and make it seem as though that they decided that they were going to do certain things.
It's kind of complicated, but.
I have more confidence in Steve Bessen and Donald Trump.
Than I do Jijingping well, folks.
As a fresh stay tuned for ATI radio Top the Hour, I'm Kevin Gordon. America struck a network seven hundred WLW