Trump gets much-needed economic boost at six-month mark, brushing off dire warning that could set back progress
Markets have been on a tear this summer since the president announced a 'pause' in Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs – with the S&P 500 index hitting a record on Monday in morning trading, toping a record from Friday.
On another key metric, the University of Michigan 's consumer sentiment survey, the index rose to 61.8 percent, up from 60.7 in June. The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent in June, after the economy added 147,000 jobs.
The White House sees the new data as validating Trump's policies – on the heels of passage of his megabill, which the administration plans to sell over the coming months despite negative approval ratings.
Trump's team even blasted out a release about a Wall Street Journal story, writing: 'Even the media admits the U.S. economy is "regaining its swagger" under President Donald J. Trump.'
'Now businesses and consumers are regaining their swagger, and evidence is mounting that those who held back are starting to splurge again,' the paper wrote.
That came just days after Trump sued the Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion over the Journal's report claiming Trump drew a 'bawdy' birthday cartoon for Jeffrey Epstein as part of a birthday compilation.
Trump's lawsuit calls the account 'false, defamatory, unsubstantiated, and disparaging.'
His Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has been bullish on the economy – as markets wrestle with the fate of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and the looming August 1 trade tariff deadline.
'They were fear mongering over tariffs, and thus far we have seen very little, if any, inflation,' Bessent told CNBC, blasting administration critics.
'We've had great inflation numbers. So, you know, I think this idea [is] of them not being able to break out of a certain mindset. All these Ph.D.s over there, I don't know what they do,' he added.
Trump attacked another Journal story over the weekend, calling it 'untruthful' after the paper reported Bessent told him that firing Powell would be bad for the market.
'If it weren't for me, the market wouldn't be at Record Highs right now, it probably would have crashed,' Trump wrote, putting the final word in all capital letters for emphasis.
Trump's repeated threats to fire Powell amid demands that he lower rates have themselves caused market gyrations.
The White House also crowed about core inflation – which excludes energy – beating expectations, with industrial production also beating expectations.
It also touted $120 billion in revenue from Trump's tariffs coming into the treasury.
But it is those tariffs that also pose the greatest potential danger to the economic gains Trump is touting.
Markets tanked when he announced his 'reciprocal' tariffs on April 2nd, and rose each time he announced a delay.
Trump has announced only a handful of deals since then, despite trade advisor Peter Navarro once boasting about reaching '90 deals in 90 days.'
Those tariffs are potentially the greatest threat to the economic gains Trump is promoting. U.S. tariffs are now at their highest level in a century.
The tariffs Trump has been announcing in letters impact allies and adversaries alike.
Trump's latest threat to Russia over its bombing campaign in Ukraine threatened to impose 100 percent 'secondary tariffs' on those who do business with Russia after 50 days – which in theory could bring in top trading partners China, India, and Brazil.
A potential 15 to 20 percent tariff on the European Union could hit some of the nation's favorite consumer products – from German cars to Italian wine and cheese.
Trump has announced a larger 30 percent tariff on Mexico and the EU of the parties can't negotiate a deal.
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Telegraph
14 minutes ago
- Telegraph
How bull---t took over our lives
'One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bull---t.' So begins American philosopher Harry Frankfurt's unexpectedly delightful essay, On Bull---t, first published in an academic journal in 1986 and later as a bestselling book in 2005. Today its message is even more resonant. Greta Thunberg may think we are living in a climate emergency, but what is clearer, if less trumpeted, is that we are living in a bulls--- emergency. Thanks to – among other things – the democratising effect of the internet, the resultant decline in deference to 'experts', rising scorn for the political establishment, online echo chambers, the blurring of fact and fiction online – a problem recognised in 1995, by the journalist John Diamond: 'The problem with the internet is everything is true'' – we live in a post-truth era. All these factors favour the liar, but they favour the bull---ter even more. How astute then of Princeton University Press to reissue Frankfurt's essay, in a 20th-anniversary edition the neat size and colour of Mao 's little red book. (You might carry it around in your pocket so that you too can become a bull---t detector.) Heaven knows that it's the superpower we need today: Frankfurt perhaps didn't know when he wrote those words how high the tide of bull---t would rise in the ensuing two decades. And he surely had no inkling that the defecatory business model of Thames Water would provide an obvious parallel for his subject. But what is bull---t and how is it different from lies? Frankfurt draws on philosopher Max Black's 1983 essay, The Prevalence of Humbug, to help make that distinction: 'humbug' is 'deceptive information, misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody's own thoughts, feelings and attitudes'. For Frankfurt, bull---t is humbug's vulgar bastard sibling but somehow worse. That Frankfurt never really defines his key term beyond 'humbug' may seem a shortcoming. Or maybe not. Maybe bull---t is like what pornography was for the US Supreme Court Judge Potter Stewart who famously failed to define the term but added: 'I know it when I see it.' Likewise, we often sense bull---t. We recognise it when the government minister, asked about a policy about-turn, begins their reply: 'The prime minister has been very clear about this…', only to continue with some sub-Chat GPT dross that doesn't even start to address the question. Or when a police officer tells the media in tone-deaf boilerplate, 'Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family…'. We see it thriving in greenwashing ads for oil companies; virtue-signalling gender fluid sign-offs in flyers from estate agents; why the AI Overview at the top of your Google search is plausible but on closer examination obviously wrong. We see it, most topically, when Donald Trump, like an overtired toddler, bless him, issues a raging 4am caps-lock policy initiative on Truth Social – yet the following day announces something that contradicts his nuit blanche fever tweet. The great thing for Frankfurt about such bull---ters is that they are not liars – not quite. As he explains: '[The bull---ter] does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bull---t is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.' At least liars, in principle, can be argued against, and their lies exposed. (What bull---ters and liars have in common, as Frankfurt recognised, is that they take the rest of us for mugs. True, some of us are attuned to bull---t, but not all of us and not always.) At the same time, the virtuoso of bull---t can be regarded as smart and deserving of promotion. In his sub-Machiavellian 1998 bestseller, The 48 Laws of Power, for instance, pop psychologist Robert Greene might have heralded bull---t. I imagine the 49th law of power should read as follows: any human seeking airtime, status and, in extremis, the big chair in the Oval Office, better become a bull---t artist. Frankfurt also quotes a passage from Eric Ambler's spy novel Dirty Story, in which a character relates the sage advice he got from his father: 'Never tell a lie when you can bull---t your way through.' Bull---t was certainly part of Trump's skill set before he was elected president. His butler, Anthony Senecal, related in a 2016 interview a particularly summative anecdote about the US president's relationship to truth: one day, Senecal was reading Trump's book The Art of the Deal, and was puzzled by a passage in which Trump mentioned that the tiles in the nursery of Mar-a-Lago, West Palm Beach club, had been personally made by Walt Disney. 'Is that really true?' the butler asked the billionaire. Trump replied: 'Who cares?' The great virtue of Frankfurt's book is that he called out such bull---t long before Trump and other populist bull---t artists got elected. That said, perhaps even Frankfurt, who died in 2023, might not have foreseen how central the art of bull---t would be to his president's second term. Consider more recent Trumpisms: during last year's presidential race, he claimed illegal immigrants were eating pets. In March this year, speaking at a joint session of Congress, he alleged that the Biden administration had spent '$8m for making mice transgender'. The claims had journalists scurrying around like, well, transgender mice (if such rodents exist) to debunk or substantiate the claims. But, in a sense they missed the point. The truths of these matters – most likely that there are no transgender mice nor pet-eating illegal immigrants – didn't matter. What Trump did here was apply his former adviser Steve Bannon's notion of 'flooding the zone' with bull---t, in order to occupy the media's time and effort, which in itself takes a kind of genius. Since he wrote On Bull---t, other intellectuals have extended Frankfurt's analysis. Among them was the late American anarchist anthropologist David Graeber who, in his jolly 2013 piece, 'On the Phenomenon of Bull---t Jobs', paid tribute to Frankfurt's essay. Graeber's all-too-convincing argument was that many of us are working in jobs that are bull---t: 'A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble. But it's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish.' (When I interviewed him, Graeber conceded that some might argue that his own work is bull---t. He didn't include book reviewers like me as bull---t artists, but he could have done.) In 2018, philosopher George Lakoff proposed an anti-bull---t remedy for journalists called the truth sandwich. Confronted by the quotidian pump of Trumpian bull---t, the thing to do is not to repeat it. Or if one did repeat it, envelope it in – as it were – the nourishing bread of truth. As you may have noticed, that hasn't happened: the hopeful notion that we might have reached peak bull---t has been disproved by politicians ever since – from Boris Johnson's stints at the No 10 Covid lectern to risibly gaudy yet impotent threats against Israel and the US from Iran's supreme leader. The foregoing may seem to suggest only men do bull---t. Not so. Think of Liz Truss who, in her hilariously self-serving memoir, wrote of her battles with proponents of trans rights: 'I am not prepared to leave the field until the battle is won.' Pure bull---t, especially from someone who left the battlefield as prime minister after 49 days of chaos at Number 10. Meanwhile, journalist Matthew d'Ancona has argued that the post-truth era was only made possible by Sigmund Freud. In psychoanalysis, he claimed, the imperative is to treat the patient successfully, irrespective of the facts. 'Sharing your innermost feelings, shaping your life-drama, speaking from the heart: these pursuits are increasingly in competition with traditional forensic values.' Truth, in other words, is the leading victim in the spread of therapeutic culture. Frankfurt's essay concludes similarly: we have given up the ideal of correctness for that of sincerity, he claimed. He wrote: 'Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, [the individual] devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the fact, he must therefore be true to himself.' In that sense, Trump is the Humpty Dumpty of politics. Consider Alice Through the Looking Glass, where Lewis Carroll has Alice observe: 'The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.' Humpty Dumpty retorts: 'The question is, which is to be master – that's all.' Power and mastery are all. Truth is beside the bull---ter's point. It's a sign of our cynical jaded times that even some of the president's fans know not to expect truth from him. No wonder, then, what happened in Selma, North Carolina in April 2022: 'I think I'm the most honest human being, perhaps, that God ever created,' Trump told a rally. His remark was greeted with laughter in the crowd. An equally valid reaction would have been: 'Bull---t!'
Reuters
14 minutes ago
- Reuters
India to maintain Russian oil imports despite Trump threats, government sources say
NEW DELHI, Aug 2 (Reuters) - India will keep purchasing oil from Russia despite U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of penalties, two Indian government sources told Reuters on Saturday, not wishing to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. On top of a new 25% tariff on India's exports to the U.S., Trump indicated in a Truth Social post last month that India would face additional penalties for purchases of Russian arms and oil. On Friday, Trump told reporters he had heard that India would no longer be buying oil from Russia. But the sources said there would be no immediate changes. "These are long-term oil contracts," one of the sources said. "It is not so simple to just stop buying overnight." Justifying India's oil purchases from Russia, a second source said India's imports of Russian grades had helped avoid a global surge in oil prices, which have remained subdued despite Western curbs on the Russian oil sector. Unlike Iranian and Venezuelan oil, Russian crude is not subject to direct sanctions, and India is buying it below the current price cap fixed by the European Union, the source said. The New York Times also quoted two unnamed senior Indian officials on Saturday as saying there had been no change in Indian government policy. Indian government authorities did not respond to Reuters' request for official comment on its oil purchasing intentions. However, during a regular press briefing on Friday, foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said India has a "steady and time-tested partnership" with Russia. "On our energy sourcing requirements ... we look at what is there available in the markets, what is there on offer, and also what is the prevailing global situation or circumstances," he said. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump, who has made ending Russia's war in Ukraine a priority of his administration since returning to office this year, has expressed growing impatience with Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks. He has threatened 100% tariffs on U.S. imports from countries that buy Russian oil unless Moscow reaches a major peace deal with Ukraine. Russia is the leading supplier to India, the world's third-largest oil importer and consumer, accounting for about 35% of its overall supplies. India imported about 1.75 million barrels per day of Russian oil from January to June this year, up 1% from a year ago, according to data provided to Reuters by sources. But while the Indian government may not be deterred by Trump's threats, sources told Reuters this week that Indian state refiners stopped buying Russian oil after July discounts narrowed to their lowest since 2022 - when sanctions were first imposed on Moscow - due to lower Russian exports and steady demand. Indian Oil Corp ( opens new tab, Hindustan Petroleum Corp ( opens new tab, Bharat Petroleum Corp ( opens new tab and Mangalore Refinery Petrochemical Ltd ( opens new tab have not sought Russian crude in the past week or so, four sources told Reuters. Nayara Energy - a refinery majority-owned by Russian entities, including oil major Rosneft ( opens new tab, and major buyer of Russian oil - was recently sanctioned by the EU. Nayara's chief executive resigned following the sanctions, and three vessels laden with oil products from Nayara Energy have yet to discharge their cargoes, hindered by the new EU sanctions, Reuters reported last week.
The Guardian
31 minutes ago
- The Guardian
ESPN reportedly selling equity stake for RedZone and other NFL properties
ESPN has reached a deal with the NFL to purchase RedZone, NFL Network and other league holdings, the Athletic reported on Friday. The NFL will receive equity in ESPN that 'is potentially worth billions' in exchange, according to the report. An official announcement is expected next week, ending a four-year period of complicated, on-and-off negotiations. Both sides declined to provide comment to the Athletic. In addition to RedZone and NFL Network, ESPN will gain access to seven more regular-season games and the NFL's fantasy football operations, as well as the potential to integrate sports betting and other special features. The NFL's equity stake in ESPN could be as much as 10%, CNBC first reported and the Athletic confirmed. An ESPN-NFL deal would require regulatory approval, a process that could take up to a year to complete. The two sides already have a cozy relationship. ESPN pays the NFL about $2.7bn per year to air a total of 25 games, including Monday Night Football. The network also holds the rights to the Super Bowls in 2027 and 2031. Friday's reported agreement comes as ESPN is preparing to launch its direct-to-consumer service, with subscribers paying $29.99 per month to bypass cable and satellite providers to view all of the network's programming through the ESPN app.
