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Lutnick Says Trump Tariffs Will Restore US Economy, Respect

  • Commerce Secretary pick prefers levies ‘across-the-board’
  • Says tariffs will make trade more fair and aren’t inflationary
Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, offered a detailed defense of tariffs in his confirmation hearing, the clearest signal yet from a cabinet pick that the new administration is prepared to impose the levies on allies and adversaries alike.

The Wall Street veteran, appearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, detailed several goals he expects tariffs to achieve, from bolstering national security to restoring American manufacturing and supply chains. He also called them an effective negotiating tactic that will force other countries to again “respect” the US. Lutnick brushed aside worries that tariffs would drive inflation higher as “nonsense,” while conceding prices of some products might go up. Asked if US tariff policy would distinguish between friends and foes, he said China should face the stiffest duties overall but that allies won’t be spared. “I think Chinese tariffs should be the highest, our adversaries should be the highest,” Lutnick said. “But the fact that we Americans cannot sell an American car in Europe is just wrong and it needs to be fixed.” “They are taking advantage of us, they are disrespecting us and I would like to see that end,” he said.The reception Lutnick got from Republicans and many Democrats suggest he’ll clear the Senate without much trouble. Vice President JD Vance introduced Lutnick, calling him “a good dude” who can reverse stagnating wages. The hearing ranged across several topics, given Commerce’s oversight of everything from the country’s wireless telecommunications spectrum to weather forecasting and fisheries management, as well as promoting US businesses overseas. Senators also focused on Lutnick’s financial firm holdings, which he pledged to divest from, as well as Cantor’s association with Tether Holdings Ltd., a stablecoin firm that’s been linked to illicit activity. Lutnick was also grilled on export controls and semiconductor manufacturing, two related battlegrounds of the US-China race to dominate next-generation technology.

For instance, the president’s threat of 25% duties on Canada and Mexico as soon as Feb. 1 is a short-term tactic related narrowly to migration and fentanyl issues along their borders with the US, which he said they both can avoid if they “execute.” His comments on a possible reprieve sent oil prices lower as Canada is a large supplier to the US.

The Cantor Fitzgerald LP chief executive, who Trump tapped to lead his “tariff and trade agenda” differentiated between tariff uses, adding that some are possible to avoid if countries bend to Washington’s demands. “If we are your biggest trading partner, show us the respect, shut your border,” he said. “And as far as I know, they are acting swiftly, and if they execute it, there will be no tariff. And if they don’t, then there will be.” But he also said he favors longer-term goals that reset trade ties and drive manufacturing back to the US, including an endorsement of “across-the-board” tariffs on a “country-by-country” basis. “We are treated horribly by the global trading environment,” he said, echoing Trump’s grievance about unfair practices by America’s biggest trading partners. How much influence Lutnick will have on White House policies is unclear, as he’ll be competing for Trump’s attention with other advisors, such China hawk Peter Navarro, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Trump has ordered several studies of overall trade issues and tariffs by April 1, which Lutnick described as part of the White House’s broader approach. Lutnick also circled back to tariffs when asked about export controls on semiconductors to China and the breakthrough of China-based DeepSeek’s open-source AI model. “What this showed is that our export controls, not backed by tariffs, are like a whack-a-mole model,” Lutnick said. “We’ve got to find a way to back our export controls with tariff model. I do not believe that DeepSeek was done all above board. That’s nonsense.”Trump has pledged three broad buckets of tariffs, though it’s not yet clear whether, when and at what scale they’ll be implemented. In addition to threats against Mexico, Canada and China, Trump has pledged tariffs on particular sectors, including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, steel, aluminum and copper. He has also mused about a universal tariff as high as 20% hitting all imports, though he hasn’t specified a target. Lutnick also singled out Canada’s dairy system as an example of a problem he wants to address.  “Canada, as we spoke about, treats our dairy farmers horribly,” Lutnick told Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from the dairy producing battleground state of Wisconsin. “That’s got to end.

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WTI Slips Below $73 as Canada-Mexico Tariff Uncertainty Grows

Oil fell after President Donald Trump’s pick for commerce secretary suggested tariffs on Canada and Mexico aren’t a done deal. West Texas Intermediate slid 1.6% to settle below $73 a barrel after Howard Lutnick said that the US’s two biggest trading partners can avoid new levies if they take action on illegal migration and fentanyl flows. Expectations that the tariffs will go into effect this weekend had earlier spurred a rally in oil futures and briefly pushed the discount for Canadian crude to the widest in six months, before narrowing after Lutnick’s remarks. “Crude prices keep dancing to the rhythm of Trump’s tariff orchestra, with Canada tariffs in focus as they go into effect on Saturday,” said Ole Hansen, head of commodities strategy at Saxo Bank. Wednesday’s price decline represents “a sour sentiment across an overall rangebound market,” he added. Crude started 2025 higher as US sanctions against Russia lifted prices, but trade-war concerns and poor economic data from China have largely erased the year’s gains. The rollout of Trump’s policy agenda has the potential to roil markets further, with the US president calling on OPEC+ to help lower crude prices. The producer cartel is set to discuss Trump’s plans to increase US oil production at its next meeting on Feb. 3, Tass reported, citing Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Almassadam Satkaliyev. Traders also digested a more hawkish-than-anticipated decision by the Federal Reserve to hold rates steady, dimming the outlook for oil demand.

NN audio file: Lower oil prices is the primary directive

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Chinese, Iranian hackers said to use US AI tech for cyberattacks…..Soon They Will Use Quantum Computers

Hackers that have ties with Beijing and Tehran, as well as other foreign governments, are utilizing artificial intelligence tools from the United States to boost cyberattacks not just against Washington but the rest of the world as well, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday citing US officials and latest security research. Numerous hacker groups in 2024 used Google LLC’s Gemini chabot to help them write malicious codes and search for cyber vulnerabilities already known to the public, the tech giant’s experts shared, adding that the tool also assisted these groups in search of specific companies that could be targeted. Google added that the perpetrators are known to have links with China, Iran, Russia and North Korea. “AI is not yet a panacea for threat actors and may actually be a far more important tool for defenders. The real impact here is they are gaining some efficiency. They can operate faster and scale up,” Google Vice President of Threat Intelligence Sandra Joyce commented.

Chinese, Iranian hackers Soon  Will Use Quantum Computers

Chinese researchers at Shanghai University say they’ve inched towards cracking military-grade encryption — with the help of a quantum computer. In a Chinese language paper published late last month in the Chinese Journal of Computers, the researchers claim they were able to use one of D-Wave’s off-the-shelf quantum computers to attack Substitution-Permutation Networks (SPNs), classical cryptography algorithms employed in widely-used encryption standards. As Tom’s Hardware reports, the paper delineates two distinct methodologies, both rooted in D-Wave’s quantum annealing algorithm. SPNs are used in algorithms tasked with protecting sensitive institutions including militaries and banks — meaning that, if the researcher’s claims are true, their findings could force institutions to revisit their cybersecurity measures.

Experts have long warned that quantum computers, which work in a fundamentally different way than conventional ones, could soon break encryption standards that keep highly classified information from the prying eyes of hackers. The latest research suggests the tech is making strides towards such an eventuality.

According to the hackers’ paper, their findings represent “the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today,” as quoted by The South China Morning Post.

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API for the week ending January 24, 2025

Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending January 24, 2025

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 3.5 million barrels from the previous week. At 415.1 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 6% below the five year average for this time of year. U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 15.2 million barrels per day during the week ending January 24, 2025, which was 333 thousand barrels per day less than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 83.5% of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 9.2 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased last week, averaging 4.7 million barrels per day. U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.4 million barrels per day last week, decreased by 297 thousand barrels per day from the previous week. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 6.4 million barrels per day, 3.6% more than the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 634 thousand barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 182 thousand barrels per day. Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 3.0 million barrels from last week and are slightly below the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories and blending components inventories increased last week. Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 5.0 million barrels last week and are about 9% below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 7.9 million barrels from last week and are 2% above the five year average for this time of year. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 13.9 million barrels last week. Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 20.3 million barrels a day, up by 2.5% from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.3 million barrels a day, up by 1.8 % from the same period last year. Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.9 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 6.9% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was up 4.5% compared with the same four

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Oil drops 1% as Egypt confirms new reserves

Crude oil fell by 1% on Wednesday after Egypt’s Petroleum Ministry confirmed it found around 8 million barrels in oil reserves in the East Crystal-1 well in the Gulf of Suez. The well will be exploited by the Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company and is expected to produce around 5,000 barrels per day. Meanwhile, the crude oil inventories in the United States reportedly grew by 2.86 million barrels in the week ending January 24.

The West Texas Intermediate for deliveries in March lost 1.04% at 6:04 am ET and sold for $72.97 per barrel, while Brent for March settlements declined by 1.14% a minute later, going for $76.62 per barrel.

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Microsoft DeepSeekGroup Hacked OpenAI Data

Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI are investigating whether data output from OpenAI’s technology was obtained in an unauthorized manner by a group linked to Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek, according to people familiar with the matter. Microsoft’s security researchers in the fall observed individuals they believe may be linked to DeepSeek exfiltrating a large amount of data using the OpenAI application programming interface, or API, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential. Software developers can pay for a license to use the API to integrate OpenAI’s proprietary artificial intelligence models into their own applications.Microsoft, an OpenAI technology partner and its largest investor, notified OpenAI of the activity, the people said. Such activity could violate OpenAI’s terms of service or could indicate the group acted to remove OpenAI’s restrictions on how much data they could obtain, the people said. DeepSeek earlier this month released a new open-source artificial intelligence model called R1 that can mimic the way humans reason, upending a market dominated by OpenAI and US rivals such as Google and Meta Platforms Inc. The Chinese upstart said R1 rivaled or outperformed leading US developers’ products on a range of industry benchmarks, including for mathematical tasks and general knowledge — and was built for a fraction of the cost. The potential threat to the US firms’ edge in the industry sent technology stocks tied to AI, including Microsoft, Nvidia Corp., Oracle Corp. and Google parent Alphabet Inc., tumbling on Monday, erasing a total of almost $1 trillion in market value. OpenAI didn’t respond to a request for comment, an Microsoft declined to comment. DeepSeek and hedge fund High-Flyer, where DeepSeek was started, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment via email. David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence czar, said Tuesday there’s “substantial evidence” that DeepSeek leaned on the output of OpenAI’s models to help develop its own technology. In an interview with Fox News, Sacks described a technique called distillation whereby one AI model uses the outputs of another for training purposes to develop similar capabilities.

“There’s substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled knowledge out of OpenAI models and I don’t think OpenAI is very happy about this,” Sacks said, without detailing the evidence.

In a statement responding to Sacks’ comments, OpenAI didn’t directly address his comments about DeepSeek. “We know PRC based companies — and others — are constantly trying to distill the models of leading US AI companies,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in the statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “As the leading builder of AI, we engage in countermeasures to protect our IP, including a careful process for which frontier capabilities to include in released models, and believe as we go forward that it is critically important that we are working closely with the US government to best protect the most capable models from efforts by adversaries and competitors to take US technology.”

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API Reports Curde Oil Inventories Increasing

U.S. crude inventories increased by about 2.9 million barrels for the week ended Jan. 24, compared with a build of 1M barrels reported by the API for the previous week.

Gasoline stockpiles increased by about 1.9M barrels, while distillate inventories — the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil — fell by 3.8M barrels.

U.S. crude oil futures rose in post-settlement trading Tuesday that spilled over to Europe Today. Markets continued their recent drop after the American Petroleum Institute reported a increase in weekly US domestic crude stockpiles. Crude Oil WTI Futures, the U.S. benchmark, recently traded at $73.00 a barrel following the report. Brent traded around $76.70.  The official US government EIA inventory report is due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT).

Nick Note: We’re coming out of the winter time major demand season for crude oil.  Inventory is now increasing as refineries are starting to shut down, as the demand for heating oil is fully met and the high demand season is over.  Refineries are finishing winter time production of heating oil. And will be shutting down for spring maintenance. We are coming into the lowest crude oil demand time of the year. And are already starting to see crude oil stock climbing.

I except to see little demand increase this summer. Europe is slowing down, China’s slowing down. Under trump they’re already making plans to start reversing the flow of the US Canada pipelines increasing Alberta  oil  supply to the Midwest and upper Northern refineries. These flows were constricted under the Biden lefty liberal tree huggers fagot  WOK dopes sorry ass administration.

There’s peace in the  Baca valley as much as you can have peace in that part of the world.  The big story is that the Trump administration  is in  back door negotiations with Russia for a ceasefire with Ukraine.  Russia is eager for a deal  Because of the  promise of allowing the Russians to export oil. So that’s another inventory plus. Their are no new major oil disruptions to report anywhere in the world.  OPEC is going to have to throw trump a bone and that means they certainly will not be decreasing production. They certainly will not be holding more inventory off the market. If they want US security guarantees they will have to give in to Trump demands for them to increase production. So I see oil prices moving towards Trump administration  inflation killing  $35 WTI.

Its nice Trump is back because we can call LGBTQ Binaries FAGOTS. I have a question. Can white people use the N word again like blacks do in referring to each other?

 

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Oil Prices Fall Amid Trade Policy Concerns and Equities Rout

Oil declined amid risk-off sentiment in wider markets and a solidifying consensus that the Trump administration’s trade and foreign policy will rely more heavily on tariffs than on supply-constricting sanctions. West Texas Intermediate fell 2% to settle near $73 a barrel, tumbling alongside equities as concerns about Chinese artificial-intelligence startup DeepSeek fueled a rout in US stock markets. Adding to the headwinds, economic activity in China, the world’s largest oil importer, faltered at the start of the year and factory activity shrank.President Donald Trump unsettled markets by ordering tariffs against Colombia because of a dispute over migrants before pausing the actions after the country agreed to his conditions. He has also threatened action against China, Canada, Mexico and the European Union, while urging OPEC to help lower prices and arguing that declining oil prices could starve Russia of revenue and help halt the war in Ukraine. The moves are helping unwind price gains tied to the latest round of US restrictions against Russia, said Jon Byrne, an analyst at Strategas Securities. Market participants are realizing that “although the Trump administration won’t be able to meaningfully lower prices from drill-baby-drill they certainly won’t pursue a policy agenda which proactively raises oil prices vis-a-vis sanctions,” he said. The decline was exacerbated by algorithmic traders dumping bullish positions after futures breached the $75 price range, according to Daniel Ghali, a commodity strategist at TD Securities. Quant funds also are deleveraging amid the market decline, contributed to selling activity, he added. WTI is still marginally higher for the year, driven by cold weather and sanctions on Russian oil that are spurring refiners in Asia to snap up alternative barrels. Those purchases have left key market gauges known as timespreads flashing strength, with the nearest contracts markedly higher than the ones further along. Meanwhile, output at Iraq’s giant Rumaila oil field remains reduced by about 300,000 barrels a day after a fire last week, an official said. That was partly offset by rising production in Kazakhstan, where output hit a record of more than 2 million barrels a day on Sunday, according to a spokeswoman for the country’s energy ministry. In Russia, the Ryazan oil refinery has suspended operations after an attack by Ukrainian drones late last week, Reuters reported.

Oil Prices:

  • WTI for March delivery fell 2% to settle at $73.17 a barrel in New York.
  • Brent for March settlement was down 1.8% to $77.08 a barrel.

 

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Quantum Computing….. Will Send You Back to the Stone Ages

The gravest threat mankind faces is artificial intelligence and quantum computers

Artificial intelligence  coupled with Quantum Computers has the ability to enslave mankind. It’s a grave danger many have warned about (including Elon Musk) we are facing.  I’m afraid we’re not prepared for the coming dislocations. Our enemies will fund their take over starting with $30 trillion in stolen bitcoin. and  the Russian/Chinese are out spending out engineering everyone else. They realize that whoever possesses the ultimate quantum computer coupled with artificial intelligence and drones and thermal cameras and facial recognition and DNA sampling and laboratories using AI genetic engineering  turning bacteria into plagues will control the world

Quantum Computing….. Will Send You Back to the Stone Ages

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Vatican urges AI oversight, warns of ‘shadow of evil’

Pope on evils of AI…. PDF

The Vatican called on governments on Tuesday to carefully monitor the development of artificial intelligence (AI), citing its potential to spread misinformation and disrupt societal trust. The warning came in a new document, Antiqua et Nova, issued by the Dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith and Culture and Education. “Yet, as in all areas where humans are called to make decisions, the shadow of evil also looms here,” the document approved by Pope Francis read. At the same time, it emphasizes the ethical challenges of AI, describing its dual capacity for progress and harm.

“Other broader aspects of AI’s impact on the economic-financial sphere must also be carefully examined, particularly concerning the interaction between concrete reality and the digital world,” the document added just a day after world markets crashed amid fears linked to DeepSeek.