At The Money: Stock Market Stories via the Narrative Machine. (December 17, 2025)

 

Full transcript below.

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About this week’s guest:

Ben Hunt is founder of Perscient, a firm that studies how narratives and stories shape markets, investing, and social behavior through the lens of information theory, game theory, and unstructured data analysis. His work analyzes the language, story arcs, and viral spread of explanations in media

For more info, see:

Persient

Personal Bio

Website: Epsilon Theory

Masters in Business (Coming soon!)

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

Find all of the previous At the Money episodes here, and in the MiB feed on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and Bloomberg. And find the entire musical playlist of all the songs I have used on At the Money on Spotify

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Investors regularly consume all sorts of financial news, opinion commentary, but they hardly ever consider. Who’s driving those narratives and whether they’re helpful to their portfolios? I’m Barry Ritholtz and on today’s edition of At The Money, we’re gonna discuss the narrative machine To help us unpack all of this and what it means for your portfolio, let’s bring in Ben Hunt of Percient.

Ben’s firm uses linguistic pattern recognition and media network mapping. To identify narrative clusters that might create investment opportunities. So Ben, you’ve written about narrative constructions and everything from politics to markets, even public health. How are narratives being weaponized in everyday practice?

Ben Hunt: Narratives have always been weaponized, meaning good politicians or effective politicians have always understood the power of a good story.

They answer the question, why? Why should you vote for me? Why should you favor this policy? That’s what good politicians are great at. They’re great at presenting their vision of what. Reality is what’s changed today is that everyone is in on that act. Everyone is now trying to tell a story. About how to think about their company’s earnings this central bank’s monetary policies.

You really saw this change with the great financial crisis (GFC) and the Fed starting to use forward guidance – starting to use their words – to impact markets. That’s a great example of narrative construction.

Then you saw so many CEOs follow suit. To tell a good story, to get a multiple on your stock rather than tell something about operation leverage or, or anything like that. It’s all about telling a story today. We can call it weaponization, but to me it’s just a natural evolution of how storytelling goes.

Barry Ritholtz: So if everybody is a storyteller, doesn’t that just create a sea of noise? How can we identify which of those stories are worth paying attention to and what’s just background noise and normal media discourse?

Ben Hunt: I think you can tell the difference between storytelling that is describing what happened. That’s just filling the, the airtime, if you will, of giving you a reason why stocks went up or financials went down today. I think what you wanna look at though carefully. Is the effort that’s made by Federal Reserve, by CEOs, pundits who are trying to be prescriptive. They’re trying to tell you a story about what should happen in the future.

It’s an indication of the effort that that company, that central bank. That institution or that, uh, investor who’s talking their book, they’re trying to give you an indicator. They’re trying to convince you of a certain course of action in the future, and you should pay attention to it because if it’s a well told story and it gets traction, it works.

Barry Ritholtz: I’ve heard you use the phrase “missionaries” to describe the small set of actors that shape narratives. Everybody else consumes. Who are these missionaries and where do they work? What do they do?

Ben Hunt: I use the word missionary because there’s a famous thought experiment around what we call the common knowledge game and around how narratives and stories spread through a crowd.

And it really goes back to old fashioned missionaries who go to some, some other country, some foreign country, and stand up and start preaching the word. That’s what a missionary is. That’s what spreads the word of a story. A missionary is someone who people are paying attention to.

Barry Ritholtz: That’d be anyone, anyone from the Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs or the Federal Reserve Chair to Roaring Kitty, that that defines missionaries.

Is that the missionary power of Powell today is a fraction of the missionary power of Powell four years ago.

Barry Ritholtz: I’m so glad you said that because ever since Kane’s, we understand the playback. You have a financial crisis or recession. The federal government stimulates with fiscal stimulus. That really did not happen to any substantial degree Following the financial crisis, how much did the sort of abdication of fiscal authority by Congress allow the Federal Reserve chairperson? To become missionary number one.

Ben Hunt: That was an enormous part of it. It was also desired by the White House. It, it was absolutely desired by the White House because –

Barry Ritholtz: by the Obama White House ?

Ben Hunt: 1 hundred percent. Because the Federal Reserve has again, this is the presentation. The presentation is that they are largely an apolitical entity. Mm-hmm. So something coming from the Fed, whether it’s a narrative, whether it’s actual policy, doesn’t get the same sort of immediate, raw, partisan pushback. That policy from the White House, the Obama White House received. So it was entirely desired that the Fed take the lead and Bernanke, Yellen now Powell. After that, they certainly rose to that challenge.

What’s changed today is that this White House has very intentionally tried to bring the Fed to heal. So if you’re looking at who are the dominant missionaries today, I’d put Bessant over Powell by a significant margin today,

Barry Ritholtz: Let’s roll back to 2020 during the first Trump presidency and into 21 during the first year or two of the Biden presidency. That seemed to be a massive regime change where if Congress previously had abdicated the fiscal stimulus – That Boomeranged with a vengeance and Cares Act one and two under President. Then first term, president Trump was the single largest fiscal stimulus, at least as a percentage of GDP, since World War ii.

And then Biden comes in and you have CARES Act three and the infrastructure bill and the semiconductor bill. It seemed like giant regime change from monetary stimulus to fiscal stimulus. Is that simply because we had a once a century pandemic and the government was scared out of its mind? Or are there other forces driving that shift, be it narrative or otherwise?

Ben Hunt: I think it’s all true. You know, that’s what, that’s what, uh, uh, Hemingway said about religions. He said, “They’re all true”. So these things are always overdetermined

What the mix is between, you know, response to the plague, what was driven by partisan politics, trying to stay in office stimulus for stimulus sake. It’s all of a piece

What’s what’s impactful here is that the Fed’s job was to avoid inflation and it was the fiscal side that drove the inflation, the helicopter money, but that, that veneer of impartiality of apolitical, I think was really damaged. During that Biden administration and so gave the opening for Trump to come in ad say, they’re all just political anyway, so I want my political guys to call the shots.

It’s all true.

Barry Ritholtz: It’s kind of fascinating that the first year of the Biden administration, and the same thing with. Both this Trump administration and the prior Trump administration, essentially you had pretty much a single party rule. The pandemic might have been an exception ’cause panic, was ruling.

You roll back to 09 with Obama, you had a divided government. The crisis was more or less over, and you just didn’t see the same level of fiscal stimulus that you saw in either ‘20 or ‘21 or arguably 2017 as well.

How much does politics. Drive partisan politics, drive narratives, um, and how significant is it to the market?

Ben Hunt: Answering the question, why? Why should you vote for this policy? Why should you support that policy? Those are the narratives that really drive our whole world and society. I always like to say that everything ultimately gets cashed out in politics. The market narratives at a very high level, at a t maybe a low level at that tectonic plate level of fiscal dominant dominance or monetary policy dominance, stimulus being, you know, the, the policies that, that are trying to reverse that hard money policies.

These are always at their core political arguments, political narratives

They absolutely are ultimately responsible for the big shifts we see in markets.

Barry Ritholtz: Let’s talk about something you’ve written about recursive social loops. Explain what that is and, and is the modern form of, let’s call it social media or decentralized media, making those loops tighter and faster?

Ben Hunt: Without a doubt, the half life of stories is declining, which makes actually kind of better for narrative analysis because you can, if not ignore, you can safely assume that the stories of today that are very specific to today; a very specific political issue or the, like, they’re not gonna be around.

The issues that stick around the ones that have a longer half-life, that have a more secular pattern, right? As opposed to, oh, we’ve just got a recursive loop and you’re just kind of done. So a, a recursive social loop simply means that we tend to all of these, these stories tend to get into their. I like to call ’em, they, they get auto-tuned into a certain audience where your echo chamber and they just go back and forth.

But in markets, the ones that are, the narratives that are longer lasting and hence more investible, are the ones that don’t get trapped into, I mean, they’re obviously impacted by political auto tuning, but they go beyond that.

Barry Ritholtz: You’ve described the narrative machine as distinct from traditional sentiment analysis. Explain the ways that that is the case.

Ben Hunt: Sentiment is, I think, a very weak read to try to understand what changes people’s minds. And this gets back to the, the initial idea of, well, how do you measure information? And a narrative is information. A story is information. The way you measure it is not.

By its truthfulness or its accuracy, you measure its strength by how does it, does it change your mind? Does it, does it? Does it make you think something differently than you thought before? Sentiment? Whether you use nice words or mean words to talk about something, it never changes your mind. It never changes your mind.

The only thing that can change your mind is a better story.

When somebody tells you a story, they put it in that story arc that has the “Truthiness” – Doesn’t have to be truth, it has to be the truthiness – And you go, oh, that makes sense.

Barry Ritholtz: I’m glad you used that phrase, truthiness. Uh, again, you, you’ve explained that narratives are not truth claims, but rather they’re coordination tools. Give us a little more details on, on what a narrative as coordination tool looks like.

Ben Hunt: A coordination tool simply means that the speaker, the opinion giver, is trying to shape opinion and behavior to a certain outcome. That’s all it means. A politician wants to shape your behavior to vote a certain way. Central bankers typically want to get you to go farther, take more risk with your portfolio than you otherwise would.

A coordination tool simply means using your words for effect – not as a accurate description of what you actually think, but to use your words to change behavior.

That’s what forward guidance is all about. That’s what advertising is all about. It’s not to share with you the actual workings, inner workings of their mind. It’s to try to change your behavior. That’s what a coordination tool is.

Barry Ritholtz:  You, you’ve used the phrase captured by a prevailing market story. Some investors get captured mm-hmm. And they get sucked into it. Some of the more common themes have been: “Bitcoins as a inflation hedge; gold as a substitute for fiat currency.”

How can any investor detect when they’ve been either consciously or unconsciously captured by a narrative?

Ben Hunt: It’s difficult. You remember the X-Files? Sure. Where Fox Molder was saying, you know, I want to believe, and that’s true for, for all of us humans, we want to believe.

And so when somebody tells us a believable story and they’re a, a believable source, then our preelection is to say, oh, huh, that’s interesting. I believe what’s crucial to do. It’s so hard.

I’ve been doing this professionally for 35 years and I, I still get, will get wrapped up in a story. I’ll read a tweet or it’ll make me really mad, or I’ll read a story and go, oh, that’s really interesting.

I gotta look up companies to invest in that theme. The crucial thing is not to think this stuff is, “It’s always a lie, or they’re trying to fool you.” It’s just to maintain some critical distance. The words are being spoken to you to get you to change your behavior. They’re trying to change your mind. They’re trying to convince you of a story that’s not bad. That’s what we humans do, and it may be a story that you do end up believing that’s fine too.

The crucial thing is always though to step back and just ask yourself, why am I reading this now? Why is this story being presented to me now? Just do that. Just do that simple step, and it will give you just give you a beat. It’ll give you a beat just to step back so you don’t rush headlong into believing a story because you want to believe it. That’s all you need to do. Why am I reading this now?

Barry Ritholtz: To wrap up, the narrative machine is everywhere. It is creating storylines for stocks, for asset classes, for markets, for politicians, for individual companies. It takes a little bit of common sense to step back, take a beat. Give yourself a moment. Ask yourself. Is this a reliable storyteller? Do they have a good track record? Are they the sort of storyteller that is worth believing or perhaps, uh, they’re selling something and we should be a little, uh, more circumspect before we buy?

I’m Barry Ritholtz; You are listening to Bloomberg’s at the Money.

 

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Find our entire music playlist for At the Money on Spotify.

 

The post At The Money: Stock Market Stories via the Narrative Machine appeared first on The Big Picture.

From the BLS:

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis over the 2 months from September 2025 to November 2025, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.7 percent before seasonal adjustment. BLS did not collect survey data for October 2025 due to a lapse in appropriations.

The seasonally adjusted index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent over the 2 months ending in November. From September to November, the index for shelter increased 0.2 percent. The energy index rose 1.1 percent over the same 2-month period and the food index increased 0.1 percent. Other indexes which increased over the 2 months ending in November include household furnishings and operations, communication, and personal care. In contrast, the indexes for lodging away from home, recreation, and apparel decreased over the same 2-month period.

The all items index rose 2.7 percent for the 12 months ending November, after rising 3.0 percent over the 12 months ending September. The all items less food and energy index rose 2.6 percent over the last 12 months. The energy index increased 4.2 percent for the 12 months ending November. The food index increased 2.6 percent over the last year.
emphasis added

The change in CPI was below expectations. I'll post a graph later today after the Cleveland Fed releases the median and trimmed-mean CPI.

Pentagon Escalates Probe Of Sen. Mark Kelly Over 'Illegal Orders' Video

Authored by Arjun Singh via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a former astronaut and captain in the U.S. Navy, is now facing a “command investigation” into his conduct by the Department of War.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 22, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A “command investigation” is a procedure by which a commanding officer conducts an official inquiry into allegations of serious misconduct by a military person, which involves sworn witness testimonies, multiple personnel working on the matter, and the opportunity for the target to submit evidence in response. At the end, a report is prepared by the investigating officer and is used as a basis for action, such as a court-martial.

“The Office of the Secretary of War, in conjunction with the Department of War’s Office of the General Counsel, is escalating the preliminary review of Capt. Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.), to an official Command Investigation. Retired Capt. Kelly is currently under investigation for serious allegations of misconduct,” a spokesperson for the Department of War told The Epoch Times by email.

On Nov. 18, Kelly and five other members of Congress with military or intelligence community experience released a video exhorting U.S. military personnel to refuse what they called “illegal orders” from President Donald Trump.

“Like us, you all swore an oath. ... Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders,” Kelly says in the video, while Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) adds, “You must refuse illegal orders.”

Trump has criticized Kelly on social media for his statement and accused him of treason, as well as suggested that he should receive the death penalty for that alleged crime.

“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand,” the president wrote on Nov. 20. “Seditious behavior from traitors!!! Lock them up???”

The Department of War, after Trump’s comments, announced that it had initiated a review of Kelly’s record.

Kelly responded to the news on social media.

“We learned the Pentagon is escalating its review of me into ‘an official command investigation.’ If Donald Trump or Pete Hegseth think they can stop me from doing my job and serving the American people, they’ve got the wrong guy,” he wrote on X on Dec. 15.

Kelly is being represented by law firm Arnold and Porter, which wrote a letter to Secretary of the Navy John Phelan defending the senator.

“To be clear: there is no legitimate basis for any type of proceeding against Sen. Kelly, and any such effort would be unconstitutional and an abuse of power,” wrote Paul J. Fishman, Kelly’s attorney.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/18/2025 - 08:05

Instacart Shares Slide As FTC Reportedly Investigates AI Pricing Tool

Instacart shares fell in premarket trading in New York after an overnight report said the Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into the online grocery delivery and pickup platform.

Reuters reported that the FTC's investigation is focused on Instacart's AI-driven pricing tool and whether it led shoppers to be charged different prices for identical goods.

The scrutiny comes as the Trump administration places renewed emphasis on lowering consumer prices after four years of failed Bidenomics.

The FTC has sent Instacart a civil investigative demand seeking information on the Eversight pricing tool. Instacart shares fell about 7% in premarket trading.

"The Federal Trade Commission has a longstanding policy of not commenting on any potential or ongoing investigations. But, like so many Americans, we are disturbed by what we have read in the press about Instacart's alleged pricing practices," the FTC told the outlet.

According to a study of 437 shoppers across four metro areas conducted by nonprofit groups Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union, shoppers paid different prices for the same supermarket items, with some paying more than 23% more than others.

"Some shoppers found grocery prices that were up to 23% higher than prices available to other shoppers for the exact same items, in the exact same store, at the exact same time," the study's authors wrote.

EXCLUSIVE: We uncovered a secret corporate scheme to raise grocery prices.

We found that Instacart is using AI algorithms to charge customers different prices for the same items.

The scary part? It's not just online. It's in physical grocery stores too.

Our months-long… pic.twitter.com/WGo56GoaaK

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) December 9, 2025

Instacart says Eversight enables retailers to run randomized price tests and argues the system is not based on shopper data or demand fluctuations. The company also says retailers, not Instacart, set prices, except at Target, where Instacart scrapes public prices and adds its own margin.

FTC emphasized that an investigation does not imply wrongdoing. The probe comes amid heightened political focus on affordability and AI-driven pricing practices.

Overnight, President Trump addressed the nation in a live-stream from the White House about the successes of his first year back in office. One of the topics he started with was affordability...  

As we've pointed out, Democrats know their constituents can't read charts and have launched multiple misinformation campaigns, attempting to pin the power price surge on Trump. However, much of the surge in power prices occurred during the nation-killing years of the Biden-Harris administration (see here).

Affordability seems likely to be a hot topic in the 2026 midterm election cycle.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/18/2025 - 07:45

How Social Security Has Evolved

Authored by Tom Margenau via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

I continually remind my readers that they shouldn’t worry too much when they read or hear reports of Social Security’s imminent collapse. Once Congress works up the nerve to deal with the issue (and once the American people accept the fact that the program needs reform), they will get around to passing amendments to the Social Security laws that will keep the program solvent for generations to come. (If you want to learn more about possible reforms to Social Security, spend 15 bucks and get my little guidebook called “Social Security: Simple and Smart.”)

Almost every year since the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, there have been amendments to that original law. Everett Collection/Shutterstock

And here is something else you should know. Change is nothing new to Social Security. Almost every year since the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, there have been amendments to that original law. For many years, they have been simply minor technical adjustments. But some years, they include major changes to the program. Here is a brief summary of how the Social Security program has evolved over the years.

The Social Security Act of 1935

The original law provided benefits only for a retired worker age 65 or older.

The 1939 Social Security Amendments

Even before the first monthly benefits were paid in 1940, these amendments added many provisions to the original law. They included benefits for a dependent wife 65 and older and for the minor children of a retiree. They also added the first survivor’s benefits: for a widow age 65 or older; for the minor children of a deceased worker; for a widowed mother of any age caring for those children; and for dependent parents of a deceased worker.

The 1950 Social Security Amendments

Congress must have realized the 1939 amendments were sexist because this year they added benefits for a dependent husband of a retired woman and for a dependent widower age 65 or older. They also provided benefits for a retiree’s dependent wife of any age as long as she was caring for his minor child. And for the first time, Congress recognized that not all marriages last forever. They included benefits for a divorced or widowed mother caring for the minor child of a deceased worker, but only if she was married at least 20 years.

The 1956 Social Security Amendments

These amendments added a major new Social Security program: disability benefits. This first law offered monthly benefits only for disabled people over age 50. But in a few years, disability benefits were made available to people of all ages. Provisions were also added to pay monthly benefits to disabled adult children of retired, disabled and deceased workers. And for the first time, Congress recognized that not all senior citizens wanted to wait until age 65 to claim benefits. Initially, they offered earlier benefits only to women. They provided reduced retirement benefits for women between the ages of 62 and 64 and reduced spousal benefits for dependent wives and widows between the ages of 62 and 64.

The 1961 Social Security Amendments

Finally, Congress authorized reduced retirement benefits for men. These changes also provided for reduced benefits for dependent widowers between ages 62 and 64.

The 1965 Social Security Amendments

For the first time, benefits were offered to divorced wives if they were at least 62 years old and if they had been married for at least 20 years. (The 1950 amendments had provided benefits only for divorced widows.) The 1965 amendments also added the Medicare program. But Medicare is NOT a Social Security program and an entirely separate funding mechanism was established for these health care benefits, so I am not including Medicare changes in the rest of this column.)

The 1972 Social Security Amendments

The concept of a “delayed retirement bonus” was added for the first time to offer an incentive to workers who wait to file for retirement benefits until beyond age 65. Over the years, this bonus has been liberalized.

The 1977 Social Security Amendments

Congress must have heard women complaining that having to be married to some philandering jerk for 20 years to get some of his Social Security was too long. So this year, they lowered the length of marriage requirement for divorced spouses to 10 years.

1983 Social Security Amendments

When these changes were implemented, the Social Security system was much closer to insolvency than it is today. These amendments bumped up the retirement age from 65 to 67. A minor tax increase was implemented. And Social Security benefit, payments to children over age 18 were eliminated. Also, for the first time, Social Security benefits became taxable.

1996 Social Security Amendments

The earnings penalty provisions were eliminated for anyone over full retirement age and were liberalized for people between the ages of 62 and the FRA. Provisions in these amendments also led to the “file and suspend” and “restricted application” loopholes in the law that allowed some retirees to get unintended benefits out of the program. Those loopholes were finally closed several years ago.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/18/2025 - 07:20

Why Coal Is Here To Stay, In One Chart

Bloomberg Opinion columnist and chief energy correspondent Javier Blas posted a chart on X from the International Energy Agency's new global coal report showing that coal demand jumped to an all-time high this year, despite years of efforts by the green-industrial complex to end its very existence.

"Global coal demand rose to an all-time high in 2025, up 0.5% y-on-y to 8,845 million tons (also, @IEA revised up 2024)," Blas wrote on X, adding, "Now, IEA says 2025 will mark a peak, with consumption dropping over the next 5 years. Time will tell, but previous peak forecasts were off."

Years of climate alarmists' demonization of coal have seemingly failed. In fact, coal remains structurally embedded in power systems and heavy industry, especially in Asia, even as renewables expand.

IEA's global coal demand forecast:

• 2025 global coal demand: 8.85 billion tonnes, a new record.

• 2030 outlook: roughly 3% below 2025 levels, still above pre-2023 norms.

• Coal’s role shifts from baseload power to flexibility, backup, and reliability as wind and solar penetration rises.

• Industrial coal use declines slowly; substitution is difficult outside power generation.

By country and/or region:

China:

• Consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined and fully determines global trends.

• Demand is broadly flat through 2025, then declines only marginally by 2030. Rapid renewable buildout reduces coal’s share of generation, but coal remains essential for grid stability.

• Coal-to-chemicals and gasification offset declines in cement and steel, creating upside risk to demand forecasts.

India and Southeast Asia

• India is the main source of net demand growth through 2030, driven by electricity demand, cement, steel, and coal-based industrial processes.

• Southeast Asia shows the fastest growth rate, led by new coal power and metals processing.

• Together, these regions offset most declines in advanced economies.

Europe

• Structural decline continues, but short-term coal burn remains volatile due to gas prices, wind variability, and security-of-supply concerns.

• Coal exits are politically uneven, with delays and carve-outs across several countries.

United States

• Near-term coal demand rebounds in 2025 due to higher gas prices, weather effects, and explicit federal policy support.

• Long-term trend remains downward, but decline slows materially versus prior expectations.

• Coal plants increasingly retained for reliability amid rising power demand and data-center load. 

Focusing on the U.S. and separate from the IEA report, Goldman analysts, led by Carly Davenport, wrote in a note to clients earlier this month that U.S. coal retirements would slow.

In this note, we update our US and ERCOT power supply/demand models. We lower our US coal retirement forecast, now expecting ~40 GW of coal capacity retirement through 2030 (vs. 66 GW prior), as we expect assets to remain online to meet growing power demand until new build baseload solutions are more readily available.

What may infuriate climate alarmists is that coal is not disappearing this decade and will continue to serve as a bridge in a world of surging power demand from AI data centers and other electrification trends until sufficient nuclear power generation comes online, which is a 2030s story.

The bigger story should be the climate alarmists who, under the guise of a "climate crisis" hoax, were hellbent on stripping the grid of stable power, while conveniently ignoring China's massive additions of coal-fired power generation. That seems highly suspicious.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/18/2025 - 05:45

Trump Claims There's 'Peace In The Middle East'

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com

President Trump had kicked off this week by saying that there is "legitimate peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years," comments that came after three Americans, including two National Guard members and a civilian interpreter, were killed in Syria.

The president made the remark when asked why the US has troops in Syria. "Because we’re trying to make sure that there’s going to be and remain peace in the Middle East, and Syria is a big part of it," he said.

Getty Images

"The new leader is a strong person, and that’s what you need," Trump said, referring to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda commander who took power in Damascus after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.

"It’s been amazing what — what’s taken place in Syria. We got rid of Assad," Trump said, acknowledging a US role in the regime change that put Sharaa’s group of jihadists, known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, in power.

The three Americans were killed on Saturday by a member of Syria’s security forces — though the US has claimed in the face of Damascus' own admissions that it was an 'ISIS attacker'.

"We got rid of other people that were really bad people and that were in the way of peace in the Middle East. You know, we have legitimate peace in the Middle East, first time in 3,000 years, and we have 59 countries backing it, and we’ll see what happens with Hamas," Trump said, referring to the Gaza ceasefire deal, which Israel has continued to violate by killing nearly 400 Palestinians since it went into effect.

Israel has also continued to violate a ceasefire deal in Lebanon signed in November 2024 with near-daily strikes, surveillance flights, and ground incursions. "Hezbollah in Lebanon has been a problem. We’ll see what happens there," Trump said.

The president appeared to be arguing that it was necessary for the US to be involved in the Middle East to maintain "peace," and also referenced the 12-day US-Israel war on Iran, which killed over 1,000 Iranians, as an example of US action in the region.

Trump on Syria:

It has been amazing what has taken place in Syria.

We got rid of Assad, we got rid of other people that were really bad people.

We have legitimate peace in the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/vUrCDCcGMp

— Clash Report (@clashreport) December 15, 2025

"If we didn’t knock out there nuclear capability, we would have never had peace," he followed with.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/18/2025 - 05:00

Russia Deploys Entire Fleet Of Nuclear Icebreakers To Arctic

Russia has deployed all eight of its nuclear icebreakers simultaneously in an unprecedented move. The fleet is being used to keep critical winter shipping lanes in the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei Gulf open, ensuring continued access to key export terminals. The deployment sends a clear signal to the West that Russia can sustain year-round Arctic shipping and maintain its natural resource export revenues.

Ship tracking website MarineTraffic reported earlier this week:

Russia deploys all eight nuclear icebreakers to keep Arctic export routes open.

Russia has, for the first time, deployed its entire fleet of eight nuclear-powered icebreakers simultaneously to maintain winter navigation in the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei Gulf. #MarineTraffic data shows that the nuclear icebreakers Taymyr, Yamal, Arktika, Yakutiya, Sibir, and 50 Let Pobedy have been operating in the Gulf of Ob since December 14, supporting traffic linked to Arctic Gate, Yamal LNG, and other terminals. Meanwhile, Ural and Vaygach are deployed in the Yenisei Gulf, enabling access to ports and industrial sites deep inside Siberia.

Russia deploys all eight nuclear icebreakers to keep Arctic export routes open

Russia has, for the first time, deployed its entire fleet of eight nuclear-powered icebreakers simultaneously to maintain winter navigation in the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei Gulf. #MarineTraffic data… pic.twitter.com/mjBE03RKYl

— MarineTraffic (@MarineTraffic) December 16, 2025

Maritime news website gCaptain added more color to this unprecedented move by Russia:

For the first time, all four of Russia's new Project 22220 Arktika-class nuclear icebreakers are deployed simultaneously. Arktika, Ural, Sibir, and Yakutiya represent the future of Russia's nuclear icebreaking capability, offering greater power, improved efficiency, and the ability to operate both in deep Arctic seas and, with adjustable draft, in shallower coastal waters.

Looking ahead, Russia has three additional nuclear icebreakers of the new Arktika class under construction. Chukotka, Leningrad, and Stalingrad are expected to enter service in 2026, 2028, and 2030, respectively, bringing the new Arktika class to a total of seven vessels, though western sanctions against Rosatomflot have slowed construction.

In parallel, the massive Leader-class icebreaker Rossiya is intended to enable year-round navigation along the Northern Sea Route by around 2030, but its completion timeline has been pushed back multiple times. It is currently around 30 percent complete based on progress updates.

To sum up, Russia's export system has come under intense Western sanctions, with the threat of another round if Moscow does not agree to a near-term peace deal with Ukraine. The deployment of the icebreakers sends a clear message to Brussels and Washington that Arctic energy will continue to flow, whether they like it or not.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/18/2025 - 04:15

Cold, Green Europe: What Happens When Ideology Trumps Physics

Authored by Vijay Jayaraj via RealClearMarkets.com,

Europe stands as the self-proclaimed cathedral of the “green” transition.

Bureaucrats in Brussels and politicians in Berlin have spent decades lecturing the world on the moral necessity to abandon hydrocarbons.

They have constructed a narrative of the European Union as a shining city powered by the breeze and sun, modeling a net-zero utopia. 

Yet, when the first real chill of winter settled over the continent this fall, that facade collapsed under the weight of physical reality.

Europe depends on fossil fuels for approximately 70% of its total energy consumption. This figure has remained stubbornly consistent over the years despite billions of euros spent on solar and wind infrastructure. The much-celebrated growth in those technologies masks a fundamental truth about energy systems that European policymakers refuse to acknowledge in public: Electricity accounts for only a fraction of total energy demand. 

Transportation, heating, industrial processes and manufacturing continue to run overwhelmingly on oil, natural gas and coal. Highlighting additions in renewable power generation while ignoring the broader energy picture is like taking pride in a new front door while the rest of the house is in shambles

In late November, the fragility of a weather-dependent energy system went on display as temperatures dropped and the demand for space heating surged. This is a predictable feature of life in the Northern Hemisphere, yet European energy policy seems perpetually surprised by it.

Right when families needed heat the most, the wind refused to blow. This is the "Dunkelflaute" – the dark doldrums – about which engineers have warned for years. Wind generation plummeted by 20%. 

Operators of the power grid, needing a backup source to avoid blackouts, turned not to batteries, which remain woefully inadequate for the job. Instead, they harnessed a workhorse of today’s energy systems: natural gas. Gas-fired generation surged by more than 40% to fill the void left by stalled wind turbines.

In the Netherlands, heating-degree days – a measure of demand for warmth – were 35% above the five-year average. Data from mid-November paints a damning picture of the failure of so-called renewables. Between November 14 - 21, as the first cold spell gripped the region, European gas demand skyrocketed by 45%. 

In absolute terms, daily gas demand leaped by 0.6 billion cubic meters per day. This was not a gradual uptick. It was the panic-induced spike of a 75% increase in residential and commercial heating needs.

Gas storage sites were the unsung heroes of this drama, meeting approximately 90% of the jump in daily demand during a critical week. Withdrawals from storage facilities surged by nearly 450%.

The magnitude of this intervention by natural gas is difficult to overstate. To put the 0.6 billion cubic meters of gas into perspective, consider that the energy equivalent of that amount of gas is the daily output of 220 nuclear power plants – a number nearly five times the size of France’s entire nuclear fleet.

Imagine the catastrophe if Europe had achieved its net-zero goals and eliminated its gas infrastructure. There is no battery system on Earth, existing or planned, that could deploy the equivalent of 220 nuclear reactors.

Despite this frantic consumption of gas, prices have remained relatively stable. This was not due to European foresight. It was due to the "peace dividend" of potentially resolving the Ukraine conflict and, more importantly, a flood of liquefied natural gas from the United States.

Herein lies the supreme irony of the story: An anti-fossil fuel, anti-drilling European Union is keeping its population alive only because of a pro-fossil fuel, pro-human administration across the Atlantic.

The United States, by encouraging hydrocarbon production, has created the surplus that now warms European homes.

Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of daily life, especially in advanced societies, which cannot run on the wishful thinking of wind and sun worshipers. The stability of European society today rests on the shoulders of American drillers of gas wells.

The European Union serves as a warning of what happens when ideology trumps physics. Climate mandates cannot make the wind blow. The "green" emperor has no clothes, and, baby, it’s cold outside.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/18/2025 - 03:30

What The Scopes Trial Was Really About

Authored by J Scott Turner via RealClearScience,

This is the centennial year for the Scopes “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, 1925’s “trial of the century”. In the dock was John Scopes, a substitute high school teacher who was accused of violating the state’s recently passed Butler Act, which prohibited any state school from teaching any theory of the origin of man that contradicted the account in Genesis. Scopes’ conviction was later overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court on a technicality.  

By any objective measure, the Scopes trial should arouse no greater attention in 2025 than Dayton’s 1925 Strawberry Festival. It set no legal precedent, led to no repeal of the Butler Act, and everyone involved just got on with their lives. Yet here we are, still talking about it a hundred years later, in commemorative conferences, in high profile commentaries, on podcasts, and even a documentary (full disclosure, produced by me).  

Interest in the Scopes trial has been kept alive by a prevailing narrative that has built up over the last century: of two titans of 1920s America, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, squaring off in an epic courtroom confrontation of science versus religion, evolution versus creation, academic freedom versus state control of education.  

We have known for some time that little of this narrative is true. The Scopes trial was a put-up job, instigated by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Dayton town luminaries who wanted to bring commerce and publicity to their small town and its sluggish economy. The “epic confrontation” was more performative than substantive, with drama provided by the defense’s claim that evolutionism and Darwinism were crystalline scientific truths, and that any contrary claims, particularly when the doubts were religiously-motivated, posed a threat to civilization itself. Ever since 1925, scientists generally have bought into the Scopes defense’s narrative. But just how strong was their case?  

The Scopes defense team brought in a group of scientific expert witnesses to inform the Court how misguided the Butler Act was. The judge, John Raulston, allowed one of the experts, Maynard Metcalf of Johns Hopkins, to testify, but with the jury absent. Based on Metcalf’s testimony, Raulston barred the defense from calling any of the other expert witnesses, and struck Metcalf’s testimony from the trial transcript. Even so, Raulston invited the experts to submit written statements for the trial record, essentially amicus curiae briefs. Their statements give us a window into the strength of the defense’s case.  

To put the matter politely, the experts were underwhelming. Metcalf’s testimony was supercilious and condescending, resting on the presumption that something had to be true because he, an expert, said it. The others’ statements were vague and tended to wander off-topic. Two of the experts trotted out the dubious Piltdown Man fossil as proof of the “missing link” between apes and humans. At best, this was evidence of expert laziness and wishful thinking. Since its “discovery” in 1912, doubts had swirled about the Piltdown fossils’ authenticity, later definitively revealed by Charles Oakley and Joseph Weiner as a hoax and an “evolutionary absurdity.”  

Aside from those faux pas, the experts fell into a logical error: an insistent conflation of evolutionism – the proposition that life on Earth has a history – with Darwinism, a proposed mechanism for evolution. In the Scopes trial record, the two terms are used interchangeably, one the synonym of the other, when they are in fact quite distinct things.  

Since the mid-nineteenth century, evolutionism has rested on a solid scientific foundation, both for life in general, and for human origins in particular. We know it is scientific because scientific knowledge is by its nature tentative and provisional, which the science of human origins exemplifies. In 1925, the science of human origins painted a different sketch of human origins than the one we presently paint, but then as now, the sketch is informed by the ongoing dialogue with nature that defines science. Our picture of human origins will continue to adjust as more evidence emerges. 

In 1925, in contrast, Darwinism was at its lowest scientific ebb since its inception in 1859. This period is known broadly as the eclipse of Darwinism. Darwinism’s most serious challenge came from Thomas Hunt Morgan’s mutationist theory for evolution, which he claimed invalidated Darwinian natural selection or at least relegated it to a minor role. While Darwinism’s bacon would eventually be pulled out of the fire by Ronald Fisher’s “genetical theory of natural selection”, that was still five years into the future. How, then, did the scientifically weak Darwinian idea come to be synonymously bound to the more scientifically robust evolutionism, both at the Scopes trial, and in the minds of the public?  

Beginning in the late 19th century, Darwinism became transformed into an ideology – “popular Darwinism” – that could be enlisted as support for a wide range of political and social causes. Some of these were flatly contradictory to one another. “Social Darwinism”, for example, has been a justification both for generous social welfare programs, and for abolishing them entirely. Generally, popular Darwinism has served as a proxy for progressive ideology, like Wilson’s “living constitution.”  

The nebulousness of popular Darwinism puts William Jennings Bryan and the anti-evolution movements in the 1920s South in a different light. Bryan’s principal complaint about popular Darwinism was its fundamental emptiness: that if Darwinism could mean anything at all, it also could mean nothing at all, making it a nihilistic ideology that would bear bitter fruit wherever it took root. The social and economic upheavals in the decade following the Great War seemed to provide ample evidence for Bryan’s argument, which resonated strongly in the largely agrarian and tradition-minded South. It was not ignorance and religious bigotry that was at work here. To the contrary, people of the South were paying close attention to events, and were not liking what they saw.  

Bryan’s critique of Darwinism was the seed crystal that precipitated these anxieties into political action, among them the passage of the Butler Act. John Butler was a communicant of the fundamentalist Primitive Baptist Church, but his eponymous Act drew support from across a broad spectrum of Tennessee society, both secular and religious. So strong was that support that Tennessee’s progressive Democrat governor, Austin Peay, felt compelled to sign it into law.  

What was at stake in the Scopes trial was not a conflict of science versus religion, or evolution versus creation. Rather, it was a political tussle over a different question entirely, namely, who gets to decide how parents educate their children? In passing the Butler Act, the people of Tennessee arrogated that decision to themselves. For their temerity, the ACLU decided it had to parachute into Dayton to take the decision back. To the extent that the high-minded rhetoric of the Scopes defense played a role, it was a political agenda masquerading as science.  

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 23:00

Ancient RNA Extracted From Extinct Woolly Mammoth Fuels De-Extinction Dreams

European researchers have achieved a milestone in paleogenomics by sequencing RNA from a woolly mammoth specimen dating back approximately 39,000 to 40,000 years, roughly three times older than the previous record for ancient RNA.

The RNA was recovered from a well-preserved juvenile mammoth known as Yuka, discovered in northern Siberian permafrost in 2010, according to Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University and lead author of a study published in the journal Cell. Dalén told the Wall Street Journal that the findings could aid in identifying the genetic traits responsible for the mammoth's distinctive woolly coat. The researcher first encountered the specimen, named after the Yukagir region where it was found by locals, during a visit to Yakutsk, Russia, in 2012.

The skin and muscle of Yuka’s front left leg are exceptionally well preserved
Love Dalen

“While the path to de-extinction might be a little bit longer than most people appreciate, I think this is actually a very important steppingstone on the way,” said Marc Friedländer, an RNA biologist from Stockholm University and a co-author of the paper.
The Wall Street Journal notes:

Yuka’s legs were intact, as were the animal’s foot pads and trunk, covered in reddish-brown fur. The skull, genitalia and internal organs were missing. Genetic analyses revealed the animal was a male; some of the RNA had come from a Y chromosome.

RNA, or ribonucleic acid, adds another level of insight into an animal beyond DNA, Dalén said, showing which genes are active in a cell at one time. DNA contains the recipe for how to make an organism, but RNA passes along the instructions on how to build and operate it.

Although the specific RNA sequences have limited direct application to current editing efforts, experts say the proof that RNA survives millennia expands the toolkit for reconstructing ancient biology. This could help prioritize gene edits for traits like thick fur, cold tolerance, and fat metabolism.

Yuka had been found thawing out of a permafrost cliff near the Siberian coastline. The young mammoth, which lived and died during the last Ice Age some 39,000 years ago, had been buried and frozen for millennia. Valeri Plotnikov

“If at some point in the future that we want to bring back the mammoth or other extinct animals, then it’s very important to recognize that we need to understand them not just at the DNA level, but also all the other components that make up an animal, like the RNA and the proteins,” Friedländer said.

“The Russians said, ‘Come with me, and we’ll bring you to see something interesting,’” he said. “They walked me into this room, and there’s this dead mammoth lying on an autopsy table.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 22:35

Trump Administration Faces Balancing Act On Agriculture

Authored by Beige Luciano-Adams via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Trump administration has in recent months rolled out a series of actions to address the long-brewing existential crisis facing America’s family farmers and ranchers, who for years have been pummeled by industry consolidation and rising costs, as well as regulatory, environmental, and trade issues.

Cows roam the ranch of R.C. and Annia Carter outside of Ten Sleep, Wyo., on Oct. 14, 2025. John Fredricks /The Epoch Times

Traditionally the backbone of American agriculture, family operations are disappearing, shrinking by more than 17 percent since 2017. In 2024, the number of U.S. farms dropped to the lowest level in more than a century.

In the cattle and beef industry, an ongoing contraction driven by a dwindling domestic herd has created an increasingly unstable climate. As prices soar and processing plants shutter, the Trump administration faces a balancing act between calming consumer anxieties and reassuring ranchers that it will deliver on deep reforms.

The Trump administration has proposed renewed antitrust enforcement, land-use reform, and supportive programming for ranchers. But the administration also slashed the tariffs it imposed earlier this year on beef imports, which ranchers say may undercut their business.

In conversation with The Epoch Times, many ranchers have been largely sanguine about what they see as an administration that is listening to their concerns and taking decisive action, but suggest more is needed to transform an industry that has become deeply exploitative, corrupt, and anti-competitive.

“Trump is trying to satisfy a lot of people right now, and I don’t mean that in a bad way,” Patrick Robinette, a North Carolina cattle producer and industry consultant, told The Epoch Times.

“But he made promises to the rural people that he was going to improve their economy. He also made promises to the consumer that he was gonna lower their prices.”

Patrick Robinette on his family ranch in North Carolina, in this photo taken within the past five years. Courtesy of Patrick Robinette Trump’s Reforms

In October, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Health and Human Services, along with the Small Business Administration, unveiled a sweeping plan to restore the nation’s shrinking cattle herd and bolster independent ranchers, including by expanding grazing on federal lands, a reversal of Biden-era policy.

Noting that around 10 percent (24 million acres) of grazing allotments are currently vacant, the Departments of Agriculture and Interior plan to position “grazing as a central element of federal land management,” while also promoting innovative tools such as virtual fencing and “outcome-based practices to sustain ecological health,” signaling federal support for regenerative grazing practices. The USDA in December confirmed it will launch a $700 million pilot program focused on regenerative agriculture.

Additionally, the government is attempting to assuage longstanding rancher concerns over predatory endangered species by developing new standards of evidence for compensating producers whose herds are impacted by wolves, bears, and coyotes.

In an attempt to address consolidation in the packing industry and stabilize prices, the White House is also ramping up loans and grants to support small- and medium-sized processors that supply local and regional markets.

And to make ranching more accessible, it plans to expand benefits for new ranchers and prioritize support for veteran-owned and operated ranches.

The USDA announced earlier this month a $12 billion bailout for farmers “in response to temporary trade market disruptions and increased production costs.”

A worker spreads salted meat, which will be dried and then packed at a plant of JBS SA, the world's largest beef producer, in Santana de Parnaiba, Brazil, on Dec. 19, 2017. Paulo Whitaker/Reuters Antitrust Challenges

President Donald Trump on Nov. 7 ordered a Department of Justice (DOJ) crackdown on “foreign-owned meat packing cartels,” referring to the handful of massive conglomerates that dominate the industry, citing potential collusion, price fixing, and price manipulation. He said that the companies artificially inflate prices and jeopardize U.S. food security.

The “Big Four” meatpackers—Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS, and National Beef—control 85 percent of U.S. beef processing and vast majorities of pork and poultry markets. JBS and National Beef are majority-owned by Brazilian parent companies.

For decades, industry consolidation has “crushed competition and hammered cattle producers,” the Trump administration said in its Nov. 7 memo, citing “mounting evidence” showing monopoly power has “slashed payments to ranchers, reduced herd sizes, driven up consumer prices and threatened America’s food supply chain.”

Robinette said it’s about time for a DOJ investigation. “But the other side to it is, maybe nothing comes out of it.”

He pointed to a similar investigation of the same companies in 2020, following years of class-action consumer lawsuits and urging from producers.

In a Nov. 21 statement, the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, which represents independent producers and processors, said it appreciated the Trump administration returning to the issue, but added that past inquiries left producers without answers.

“We urge the Administration to ensure this investigation leads to substantive action and real reforms,” it stated.

Multiple federal investigations of the companies and their subsidiaries have spanned across administrations, resulting in millions in settlement payouts.

But their hold on the market remains.

The 2020 DOJ investigation, according to Farm Action, a nonpartisan watchdog group, produced “no major enforcement actions or reforms.”

All the “Big Four” companies have faced multiple antitrust lawsuits. Last month, Tyson and Cargill paid a combined $87.5 million to settle a federal class action lawsuit brought by consumers who accused them of conspiring to inflate beef prices by restricting supply. Along with other poultry producers, they settled a civil wage-fixing case in January for $398 million, which mirrored a DOJ case.

JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company, settled a case for $83.5 million in January, in which producers alleged all four companies conspired to artificially reduce the price of cattle.

The conglomerate has also been plagued by corruption scandals in the United States and in Brazil. In 2017, JBS owners agreed to a $3.2 billion plea deal in Brazil after admitting to bribing more than 1,800 politicians to illicitly acquire financing; in 2020, the company pleaded guilty to bribery charges and agreed to pay around $256 million in criminal fines following a DOJ investigation.

Despite increased scrutiny from lawmakers across various administrations over antitrust concerns, consolidation and U.S. expansion have continued.

According to a recent analysis by Farm Action, price-fixing settlement payouts remain a tiny fraction of the companies’ profits. And five years after the last DOJ investigation, their hold on the market remains undiminished.

“This time,” the group urges, “the DOJ must dig deeper into the collusion and political influence that define this industry.”

Heather Hampton-Knodle feeds cattle on her ranch in Illinois in 2025. Courtesy of Heather Hampton-Knodle Trade Policy

In an effort to curb domestic beef prices, Trump in October proposed increasing imports from Argentina, drawing ire from U.S. ranchers who say cheap imports undercut them while failing to lower consumer prices.

In November, the administration solidified an agreement with Argentina that will quadruple low-tariff beef imports from the country, to some 80,000 metric tons.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association opposed the move and urged the president to “let the cattle markets work.”

Responding to pushback from ranchers, Trump said in an Oct. 22 Truth Social post that “the only reason cattle ranchers are doing so well, for the first time in decades,” is because of his tariffs.

“If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years – Terrible! It would be nice if they understood that, but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor.”

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has attributed much of the affordability crisis to inherited impacts from the last administration, including a $50 billion agricultural trade deficit, and has defended Trump’s trade policy as putting America first. She also noted that while the cost of many staples has fallen since Trump took office, beef remains an outlier.

“The president is committed to getting that down but also to ensuring that we’re supporting, protecting and rebuilding our herd for our cattle ranchers,” she said in a Nov. 20 interview.

Heather Hampton-Knodle, an Illinois-based cattle producer and former president of American Agri-Women, told The Epoch Times that the Argentina beef deal “is really hard to relate to, given how tariff policies have impacted us on both ends—our costs of inputs and our opportunities for exports.”

Hampton-Knodle blames tariffs for driving up farm bankruptcies and the cost of inputs such as fertilizers, which are mostly imported.

“This is not sustainable,” she said, noting emergency federal aid for farmers—such as that doled out during Trump’s first administration, a $10 billion payout in March, and a similar, upcoming plan—only goes to the creditors, not to the root cause.

“It does not result in a return to farmers so they can reinvest in their business or send their children to college or do the things that people in developed countries want to do,” she said.

Hampton-Knodle said solidifying multiple significant trade deals could help smaller producers.

In the bigger picture, she said, “I am concerned not only for beef producers, but agriculture as a whole, that we continue to be pawns on other people’s chess boards.”

“A deeper understanding of how farming actually works and how the majority of us are price takers—we’re not price makers—would really help develop better policy.”

Some industry players welcomed the Trump administration’s efforts to address rising consumer prices.

Following a Nov. 14 executive order removing tariffs on certain foods and agricultural products, Michelle Korsmo, president of the National Restaurant Association, called the move a “common-sense step” to strengthen the food supply chain.

“This action delivers needed relief for restaurants and their customers at a time when food costs have risen nearly 40 percent over the past four years,” Korsmo said in a statement.

Trump on Nov. 20 issued an executive order exempting a range of Brazilian agricultural imports, including beef, from 40 percent retaliatory tariffs he’d imposed in July; reciprocal 10 percent tariffs remain in place.

Trade group representatives from different parts of the U.S. supply chain took opposite positions on the issue, a display of the complex balance the administration is trying to strike.

“When the president imposed 40 percent tariffs on Brazilian beef, we viewed it as a signal to support our industry’s ability to produce what we consume,” Bill Bullard, CEO of R-Calf, told The Epoch Times.

“Now, that’s been erased, sending a new signal that will deter the domestic industry from rebuilding and expanding as needed.”

On the other hand, the International Fresh Produce Association, a trade organization, welcomed Trump’s removal of the 40 percent tariff, noting Brazil is a “key global supplier” that complements U.S. production.

“This action will help maintain the affordability of high-quality fresh produce for American consumers,” the association said in a statement.

Cattle Versus Beef Prices

Before 2020, the issue for ranchers was that the price of live cattle collapsed while beef prices soared, benefitting processor conglomerates. While cattle prices historically followed beef prices closely, they began to diverge around 2015.

Bullard, of R-Calf, suggests the longstanding disconnect between cattle and beef prices is evidence of market failure.

A drought that began in 2020 accelerated the decline of the national herd, he explained, and cattle prices started chasing already inflated beef prices.

Both cattle and beef prices have hit record highs in recent months. The USDA reported this month that cattle prices fluctuated following the news of imports from Brazil and Tyson’s announcement of beef packing plant closures, but projects that tight supply will support record prices through 2026.

Bullard, in a recent analysis, points out that the per capita supply of beef was higher in 2024 than at any time since 2020. Still, domestic production has not kept up with consumption, and the United States has become increasingly reliant on imports.

A New World screwworm outbreak that temporarily suspended cattle imports from Mexico, which the United States relies on to maintain a stable supply of inexpensive beef, has also contributed to the shortage.

“Our problem is that we’ve reduced our nation’s ranchers and their herd size over the past few decades to the point where it cannot ... meet domestic food security needs, but also it cannot withstand any form of economic shock without causing severe price anomalies for producers and consumers,” Bullard said in his analysis.

While the Trump administration is telling ranchers that beef prices are too high, R-Calf has asked the administration to investigate how much of that is caused by anticompetitive practices on the part of packers and retailers.

In its Oct. 21 letter to the president decrying the Argentina trade deal, the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association stressed today’s beef prices are not due to inflation or market manipulation, but rather the result of decades of industry contraction, a depleted national herd, and increased input costs for ranchers.

“For the first time in years, cattle producers are finally earning prices that reflect actual costs of production—a long-overdue correction, not an unintended sign of distress,” the group said.

But some warn the recent upswing may be particularly volatile.

As processing plants shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, Robinette explains, many ranchers began switching at least part of their operation to a direct-to-consumer model. He suspects the jump in live cattle prices that followed, while good for producers, won’t last and may be artificial.

Robinette said one theory he is watching is “that the Big Four have worked with the brokers to artificially increase the price of the cattle, and then there will be a certain period of time, and they’ll collapse that price.” The purpose, he said, would be to undermine the direct-to-consumer model and further consolidate the market.

“The big Packers can afford to lose $300 a head while the independent producers and packers cannot—we don’t have enough runway,” R.C. Carter, an independent rancher based in Wyoming, told The Epoch Times.

Ranchers reason that conglomerates can afford temporary losses in part because they can make up for it with cheap imports.

“They need that foreign beef coming in at 30 or 40 percent below the USDA beef price so they can make their 2 to 3 percent margin they’re doing now,” Robinette said.

The Epoch Times contacted JBS, Cargill, Tyson, and National Beef for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

USDA prime beef is displayed at a Costco store in Novato, Calif., on Nov. 11, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Origin Labeling

A group of independent cattle ranchers has been lobbying the Trump administration to issue an executive order reinstating Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, which they argue does not require congressional intervention, as it is based on existing federal code.

The White House and USDA did not respond to inquiries about a potential executive order by publication time.

For Robert Groom, a cattle producer and U.S. Cattlemen’s Association board member representing the Northeast, the problem is not so much that imports have increased, but that they have been deceptively labeled for decades.

“I’m not so worried about imports from Argentina or Brazil or anywhere if it’s properly inspected, and if it retains its origin [labeling] all the way to [the] consumer,” he told The Epoch Times. But under current policy, the country-of-origin label can be stripped and replaced with a “USDA Inspected” label, which consumers mistakenly believe is U.S. origin beef.

“Demand for beef has been on a continual upward trend since the early 1990s. That signal hasn’t gone through to the [producer]—they’ve lost money far more years than they made money. There’s no incentive to rebuild, and that’s entirely because we have no product differentiation,” he said.

The USDA in November announced that, beginning in 2026, it will begin enforcing compliance on products that bear voluntary U.S. origin labels—meaning that ultimately only animals born, raised, and slaughtered in the United States can make such claims. It also plans to invest in independent processors. This, however, doesn’t mean it will enforce Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling.

Groom is encouraged by the Trump administration’s focus on rebuilding the domestic herd and helping small producers.

“Their hearts are definitely in the right place; it’s just that some of the fundamental factors behind this are going to need to be at the top of their list,” he stated.

As for the DOJ investigation, Robinette said, it’s too broad and too soon to tell. The past two years will show razor-thin margins for the meat packers; looking further back, he said, a different pattern emerges.

“They are manipulating our market. It’s been obvious for decades, but nobody would touch ‘em,” he stated.

For now, there is an uneasy balance.

*  *  * Please consider buying clean, high-quality beef here.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 22:10

Meta Chose Revenue Over Policing Chinese Scam Ads, Documents Show

Meta knowingly tolerated large volumes of fraudulent advertising from China to protect billions of dollars in revenue, a new investigation from Reuters unveiled this week. Internal documents show executives prioritized minimizing “revenue impact” over fully cracking down on scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned ads.

Although Meta platforms are blocked inside China, Chinese companies are allowed to advertise to users abroad, according to Reuters. That business grew rapidly, reaching more than $18 billion in revenue in 2024—about 11% of Meta’s global sales. Internal estimates showed roughly 19% of that revenue, more than $3 billion, came from prohibited or fraudulent ads.

Meta documents reviewed by Reuters describe China as the company’s top “Scam Exporting Nation,” responsible for roughly a quarter of scam ads worldwide. Victims ranged from U.S. and Canadian investors to consumers in Taiwan. An internal presentation warned, “We need to make significant investment to reduce growing harm.”

In 2024, Meta briefly did just that. A dedicated China-focused anti-fraud team cut problematic ads roughly in half, from 19% to 9% of China-related revenue. But after what one document described as an “Integrity Strategy pivot and follow-up from Zuck,” the team was asked to pause its work. Meta later disbanded the unit, lifted restrictions on new Chinese ad agencies, and shelved additional anti-scam measures.

Within months, fraudulent advertising rebounded. By mid-2025, banned ads again made up about 16% of Meta’s China revenue. Former Facebook executive Rob Leathern said the scale of abuse was indefensible: “The levels that you’re talking about are not defensible. I don’t know how anyone could think this is okay.”

Reuters writes that Meta relies on a network of Chinese ad resellers that receive commissions and special protections. Ads flagged for violations often remain live during lengthy secondary reviews, allowing scammers time to profit. One internal document acknowledged that the delay was “adequate for scammers to accomplish their objectives.”

An external report commissioned by Meta concluded that the company’s own policies fostered systemic corruption. Because the ads target foreign users, Chinese authorities generally do not intervene, leaving fraudsters with “little or no risk.” Compared with competitors, the report found Meta’s enforcement in China to be inconsistent.

Despite internal warnings, Meta decided it would permanently tolerate higher levels of misconduct from Chinese advertisers rather than seek parity with ad quality elsewhere. A February 2025 document said the company would aim only to “maintain the % of global harm” from China.

Meta disputes aspects of Reuters’ findings, saying the China-focused team was always temporary and that Zuckerberg did not order its shutdown. The company says it has blocked or removed tens of millions of ads and cooperates with law enforcement. Still, internal discussions show enforcement proposals repeatedly scaled back because “the revenue impact is too high.”

As one document bluntly concluded, even when abusive accounts are shut down, “It’s likely the revenue will return.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 21:45

Don Wilcox of Real Estate News Exchange reports CPP Investments forges $3B logistics JV with Dream Industrial:

CPP Investments is forging a joint venture to acquire up to $3 billion in Canadian last-mile industrial properties with Dream Industrial REIT (DIR-UN-T) and Dream Asset Management Corp., the firms announced Wednesday.

The venture is to have an equity allocation of $1.1 billion and be seeded with an $805-million portfolio of 12 properties from Dream Industrial. The seed properties comprise approximately 3.6 million square feet of space in four major markets, following the investment thesis for the venture.

“The Canadian industrial sector continues to demonstrate resilient demand and meaningful long-term growth drivers, supported by a structurally high need for well-located space as supply chains and logistics continue to evolve,” said Sophie van Oosterom, managing director, head of real estate at CPP Investments, in its announcement.

“By partnering with Dream, a leading institutional asset manager and operating platform, we can efficiently scale our exposure in the Canadian market to capture this growth and drive long-term value for the benefit of CPP contributors and beneficiaries.”

Properties in the seed portfolio comprise a total of 27 buildings in the Greater Toronto Area, Montreal, Calgary, and London, Ont. 

CPP invests $1 billion in the JV

CPP Investments is supplying approximately $1 billion of the capital and will own 90 per cent of the venture, with approximately $100 million from Dream Industrial. This will allow for the expected acquisition of approximately $3 billion of industrial assets including leverage.

The venture will seek properties in Canada’s major markets “offering excellent connectivity to population clusters and arterial transport routes.” It intends to pursue a value-add strategy acquiring assets with material existing vacancy, near-term lease-rollover, larger capital investments, intensification and redevelopment opportunities.

Dream subsidiaries will be the asset manager, and provide property management and leasing services.

“We are excited to partner with CPP Investments to continue to expand our presence in the Canadian industrial market,” said Alex Sannikov, chief executive officer of Dream Industrial, in the release. “This new joint venture is highly complementary to the strategic direction of Dream Industrial and our existing private capital partnerships. We look forward to growing this partnership with CPP Investments.”

The industrial market has been one of Canada's most robust commercial real estate investment sectors in recent years, and although absorption has slowed somewhat over the past few quarters, well-located and modern facilities have continued to lease up and perform well. 

This also offers CPP Investments another major Canadian venture, as pressure has mounted on institutional investors to further support home-grown business in the wake of increased cross-border trade tensions and tariffs with the U.S.

Partnership to lift Dream above $30B in AUM

In its own release, Dream noted average in-place and committed base rent for properties in the initial portfolio was approximately $11 per square foot as at the end of Q3, with a weighted average lease term of approximately three years.

The properties will be sold into the venture unencumbered, in two tranches during the first six months of 2026.

“This new venture with one of the largest and most respected institutional investors globally is a testament to the strength of our platform, our reputation in the sector, and our asset and property management capabilities,” Dream’s founder and chief responsible officer Michael Cooper said in the announcement. 

“With this partnership, we expect to surpass $30 billion of assets under management and increase our growth rate as we continue to build out our institutional asset management business.”

The partners were advised by TD Securities, RBC Capital Markets, Colliers Capital Markets and CBRE. Stikeman Elliott LLP and King & Spalding LLP provided legal advice.

This is not Dream's first major partnership, including within the industrial sector where it is also involved in the Dream Summit Industrial LP, with Singapore's sovereign wealth manager GIC. 

Also in the release, Dream Industrial announced the suspension of its dividend reinvestment program, opting to pay all distributions in cash.

About CPP Investments, Dream Industrial and Dream

CPP Investments manages the Canada Pension Plan Fund for over 22 million contributors and beneficiaries. It invests globally in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure, fixed income and alternative strategies including in partnership with funds. 

Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, São Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm’s length from governments. As of Sept. 30, the fund totalled $777.5 billion.

Dream Industrial is an owner, manager, and operator of a global portfolio, with interests in 340 industrial assets (552 buildings) totalling approximately 73.2 million square feet of gross leasable area in markets across Canada, Europe and the U.S.

Dream Asset Management is the institutional asset management arm of Dream Unlimited Corp. (DRM-T), providing investment and asset management services to its publicly listed trusts and institutional partners. As of Sept. 30, Dream managed $28 billion of assets across four TSX-listed entities, private funds and numerous private partnerships.

Dream provides real estate development, management, investment and operational services across North America and Europe.

Greg Dool of PERE also reports CPP Investments seeds Canadian industrial JV with $727m commitment:

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has committed C$1 billion ($727 million; €618 million) to seed a joint venture focused on acquiring last-mile industrial assets across its home country.

Canada’s largest institutional real estate investor is partnering in the venture with Toronto-listed Dream Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust and its private investment arm, Dream Asset Management, the firms said Wednesday. Dream Industrial is committing an additional C$100 million of its own to the JV, which will have approximately C$3 billion in buying power with leverage.

Coinciding with the launch, Dream Industrial has agreed to sell a 12-asset, 3.6 million-square-foot portfolio spanning Alberta, Ontario and Quebec to the venture from its balance sheet for C$805 million. By square footage, those assets represented about 17.5 percent of Dream Industrial’s overall REIT portfolio as of September 30.

In a Wednesday statement to shareholders viewed by PERE, Dream Industrial called that price “a significant premium” relative to the current value of its shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The REIT’s shares closed at C$12.19 on Tuesday evening, the day before the deal was announced, whereas the net asset value of its portfolio stood at C$16.74 per unit as of September 30. According to Dream Industrial, the JV’s C$805 purchase price values the seed assets “slightly above” the current NAV for that portion of the portfolio, representing a premium of more than 37 percent compared with its share price.

By square footage, 37 percent of the seed portfolio is in the Greater Toronto area and another 36 percent in Montreal, with the rest located in Calgary and London, Ontario. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026.

CPP will own 90 percent of the venture, while Dream Industrial will hold the other 10 percent and act as property manager for its existing and future assets. Dream Asset Management will serve as the JV’s asset manager.

Sophie van Oosterom, managing director and head of real estate for CPP, emphasized “resilient demand and meaningful long-term growth drivers” for logistics and supply chain-oriented Canadian industrial property. By partnering with Dream, which is both an asset manager and operating platform, CPP can “efficiently scale our exposure in the Canadian [industrial] market to capture this growth,” she said in the statement.

CPP managed C$777.5 billion of assets globally as of September 30, with approximately 6.8 percent of that portfolio in private real estate as of March 31, the most recent data available for allocations by asset class. As head of real estate since joining CPP at the start of 2025, van Oosterom has sought to adopt a more risk-on approach in which the asset class contributes more to the fund’s total returns, which she portrayed as a change in strategy from the prior two decades, during which the asset class was primarily a source of diversification and protection against volatility.

Describing this shift last month at the PERE America Forum in New York, van Oosterom said CPP would be open to investing with new partners, particularly for opportunities in “very operational and specialized strategies.”

“We need to look around the corner as well and say, which entrepreneurs are out there that we can back or support to grow those portfolios into the institutionalized platforms that we think we can create value in,” she said.

Earlier today, CPP Investments issued this press release on its $3 billion joint venture with Dream Industrial REIT and Dream Asset Management:

Transaction Highlights  

• CPP Investments, Dream Industrial and Dream Asset Management Corporation form new Canadian industrial Joint Venture, with $1.1 billion of allocated equity capital
• The Joint Venture is expected to have approximately $3 billion of acquisition capacity, including leverage, and will target last-mile industrial assets in major Canadian markets
• The Joint Venture has agreed to acquire a 3.6 million square foot Initial Portfolio from Dream Industrial REIT for over $800 million

Toronto, Ontario, December 17, 2025 — Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (“CPP Investments”), Dream Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust (TSX: DIR.UN) (“Dream Industrial”), and Dream Asset Management Corporation (“Dream”) (collectively, the “Partners”) today announced the formation of a joint venture (the “Joint Venture”) to acquire last-mile industrial properties in major markets across Canada.

The Partners have allocated $1.1 billion of equity capital, including $1.0 billion from CPP Investments (90%) and $0.1 billion from Dream Industrial (10%), allowing for the expected acquisition of approximately $3.0 billion of industrial assets strategically located in Canada’s major markets, offering excellent connectivity to population clusters and arterial transport routes.

A subsidiary of Dream will be the asset manager for the Joint Venture and a subsidiary of Dream Industrial will provide property management and leasing services.

As part of this Joint Venture, the Partners have agreed to acquire a portfolio of 12 Canadian industrial assets totaling 3.6 million square feet across Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta (the “Initial Portfolio”) from Dream Industrial. The Joint Venture is acquiring the Initial Portfolio for a purchase price of $805 million.

“The Canadian industrial sector continues to demonstrate resilient demand and meaningful long-term growth drivers, supported by a structurally high need for well-located space as supply chains and logistics continue to evolve,” said Sophie van Oosterom, Managing Director, Head of Real Estate at CPP Investments. “By partnering with Dream, a leading institutional asset manager and operating platform, we can efficiently scale our exposure in the Canadian market to capture this growth and drive long-term value for the benefit of CPP contributors and beneficiaries.”

“We are excited to partner with CPP Investments to continue to expand our presence in the Canadian industrial market,” said Alex Sannikov, Chief Executive Officer of Dream Industrial REIT. “This new Joint Venture is highly complementary to the strategic direction of Dream Industrial and our existing private capital partnerships. We look forward to growing this partnership with CPP Investments.”

“This new venture with one of the largest and most respected institutional investors globally is a testament to the strength of our platform, our reputation in the sector, and our asset and property management capabilities,” said Michael Cooper, founder and Chief Responsible Officer of Dream. “With this partnership, we expect to surpass $30 billion of assets under management and increase our growth rate as we continue to build out our institutional asset management business.”

The Partners were advised by TD Securities, RBC Capital Markets, Colliers Capital Markets and CBRE. Stikeman Elliot LLP and King & Spalding LLP provided legal advice in connection with establishing the Joint Venture.

About CPP Investments

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments™) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Canada Pension Plan Fund in the best interest of the more than 22 million contributors and beneficiaries. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, we make investments around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure, fixed income and alternative strategies including in partnership with funds. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, São Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm’s length from governments. At September 30, 2025, the Fund totaled C$777.5 billion. For more information, please visit www.cppinvestments.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram or on X @CPPInvestments. 

About Dream Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust

Dream Industrial is an owner, manager, and operator of a global portfolio of well-located industrial properties. As at September 30, 2025, Dream Industrial has an interest in and manages a portfolio comprising 340 industrial assets (552 buildings) totaling approximately 73.2 million square feet of gross leasable area in key markets across Canada, Europe, and the U.S. Dream Industrial’s objective is to deliver strong total returns to its unitholders through secure distributions and growth in net asset value and cash flow per unit, underpinned by its high-quality portfolio and investment-grade balance sheet. Dream Industrial is an unincorporated, open-ended real estate investment trust. For more information, please visit www.dreamindustrialreit.ca.

About Dream Asset Management Corporation

Dream Asset Management is the institutional asset management arm of Dream Unlimited Corp. (TSX: DRM) (“Dream Unlimited”) providing investment and asset management services to its publicly listed trusts and institutional partners. As at September 30, 2025, Dream manages $28 billion of assets across four Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) listed entities, private funds and numerous private partnerships. Dream is a leading provider of real estate development, management, investment, and operational services across North America and Europe. For more information, please visit www.dream.ca.

This is a major transaction for CPP Investments, Dream Industrial REIT and Dream Asset Management Corporation.

I've never heard of Dream Industrial REIT but I'm not a big follower of REITs in general.

Looking at Dream's website however, you can't help but be impressed and this is the second joint venture for them with a major institutional partner having partnered up with GIC and Summit on another venture two years ago.

Recall, Sophie van Oosterom, Managing Director, Head of Real Estate at CPP Investments was hired a little over a year ago from Schroders Capital to take over the organization's massive real estate portfolio.

Her focus is on partnerships that offer unique strategies or that are best-in-class at areas they cover and this joint venture fits that criteria.

As she states in the press release:

“By partnering with Dream, a leading institutional asset manager and operating platform, we can efficiently scale our exposure in the Canadian market to capture this growth and drive long-term value for the benefit of CPP contributors and beneficiaries.” 

Dream's Canadian logistics properties are mostly in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary and even though logistics properties are fully valued, these are prized assets that CPP Investments can hold for many years without taking any currency risk (since they're right there in Canada). 

Clearly they did their due diligence on Dream and were impressed or else they wouldn't commit $1 billion equity, $3 billion in total to this JV.

Are there risks? Sure, the Canadian economy is teetering on a recession despite what you see in the data from Stats Canada (don't get me started) but these are assets they will hold through a few cycles so I'm not worried about that.

Canada's population is growing and more people will end up buying more stuff so these logistics properties will always be in high demand. 

Below, Alexander Sannikov, CEO of Dream Industrial REIT joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the industrial real estate landscape. He says while rents are cheaper in Europe there is still room to run (interview from May 2024, listen to his comments on Canada).

'I Inherited A Mess And I'm Fixing It': Watch President Trump Unveil 'Warrior Dividend', Signal Housing Reform, Not Mention Venezuela

Update (2120ET): As expected, President Trump celebrated the successes of his first year back in office as part of tonight's national address from the White House.

“11 months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it,” Trump began.

“When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country, which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans.”

As JustTheNews' Ben Whedon reports, Trump touched on a wide array of subjects, highlighting the decline in maritime drug trafficking, his efforts to tackle wokeness in schools, and the revitalization of the military, among others.

"Drugs brought in by ocean and by sea are now down 94%" he said. "We have broken the grip of sinister woke radicals in our schools, and control over those schools is back now in the hands of our great and loving states where education belongs, after rebuilding the United States military in my first term, and with the addition we are adding right now, we have the most powerful military anywhere in the world, and it's not even close."

Early in the speech, he addressed affordability, insisting that his use of tariffs had helped to address the issue.

"Much of this success has been accomplished by tariffs, my favorite word tariffs, which for many decades have been used successfully by other countries against us, but not anymore," he said.

"Companies know that if they build in America there are no tariffs and that's why they're coming home to the USA in record numbers."

He also used the speech to announce a Christmas bonus to American service members to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation.

"Tonight, I am also proud to announce ...1,450,000 military service members will receive a special we call 'warrior dividend' before Christmas," Trump said.

"So warrior dividend in honor of our nation's founding in 1776, we are sending every soldier $1,776... and the checks are already on the way."

Later in the speech, he vowed to dramatically reform the American housing industry as costs of living increasingly rank among the top issues for young Americans.

"I will announce some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history," he promised.

"A major factor driving up housing costs was the colossal border invasion."

"The last administration and their allies in Congress brought in millions and millions of migrants and gave them taxpayer funded housing while your rent and housing costs skyrocketed," he lamented.

"Over 60% of growth in the rental market came from foreign migrants."

"At the same time, illegal aliens stole American jobs and flooded emergency rooms getting free health care and education paid for by you, the American taxpayer," he went on.

"They also increase the cost of law enforcement by numbers so high that they are not even to be mentioned. For the first time in 50 years, we are now seeing reverse migration."

And finally, perhaps most notably, not a mention of the word 'Venezuela'.

Watch President Trump's address here:

President Trump is due to deliver remarks to the nation at 9 p.m. ET.

While there has been no confirmation of the content of the address, The White House said his speech will highlight the administration’s actions during the past year and tease priorities for 2026.

Prediction markets see Venezuela, Inflation, and the Border as the most likely topics for discussion...

Source: PolyMarket

..with some suggesting the 'peace-maker' president may use this moment to announce kinetic actions in Venezuela (following his complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers this week)...

Earlier in the evening, Trump told reporters:

• *TRUMP ON VENEZUELA: IT'S A BLOCKADE, NOT LETTING ANYONE GO THROUGH WHO SHOULDN'T

• *TRUMP CLAIMS VENEZUELA 'ILLEGALLY TOOK' US HOLDINGS, THREW OUR COMPANIES OUT, WE WANT IT BACK

• *TRUMP ON VENZ.: GETTING LAND, OIL RIGHTS, THEY TOOK IT AWAY

• *TRUMP: MESSAGE THIS EVENING IS OUR COUNTRY WILL BE STRONG

• TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ASKING US OIL INDUSTRY IF THEY WOULD RETURN TO VENEZUELA ONCE MADURO IS GONE -POLITICO

Odds have been rising...

Source: PolyMarket

“It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!" Trump posted on social media on Tuesday while announcing the speech.

Watch Live here (due to start at 2100ET):

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 21:30

Polysilicon: An Opportunity To Demonstrate 'America First'

Authored by Emma Bishop via RealClearPolicy,

If the world’s future is powered by semiconductors and designed by advanced AI chips, then it will be printed on polysilicon; the purest manmade material and the foundation for any semiconductor chip. Without it, advanced technologies and electronics would not exist.

Importantly, the U.S. currently faces a decision: to rely on imported polysilicon from China to unlock the electronic economy, or to protect and expand existing capacity across the U.S. and allied nations to feed the growing demand for chips, and therefore for polysilicon. The ongoing Section 232 investigation into imported polysilicon is at the heart of this opportunity, as it allows the U.S. to confront China’s stranglehold on a key advanced material head-on. The investigation provides the federal government with the opportunity to enforce tariffs, quotas, or other import restrictions on Chinese polysilicon, and raises the question of how strong a stance the administration will take to cut dependence on volatile supply chains for vital technologies. 

What makes this Section 232 decision unique is that polysilicon is one of a few materials the U.S. already produces in sufficient quantities. Today, the U.S. has approximately 50,000 metric tons (MT) of active production, with an additional 16,000 MT of announced new capacity and 17,600 MT of idled capacity that could be restarted. This production capacity, bolstered by supply from allies, is sufficient to meet expected U.S. demand.

China controls the polysilicon market and erodes global competition by producing more than double the polysilicon needed to meet global demand. State-backed programs including massive subsidies, limited environmental oversight, and forced labor programs targeting Uyghur workers are taken advantage of by Chinese entities as they produce polysilicon far below free-market prices. Cratering the global price for these materials enables China’s supply chain network to undermine the short- and long-term financial viability of U.S. and allied companies.

This moment demands uncompromising policy to protect American jobs and capabilities while reducing our dependence on the global behemoth that controls these markets, and the Section 232 investigation provides an opportunity to seize it. Yet, at such a critical time, some groups are calling on the administration to implement a tariff-rate quota (TRQ), which guarantees access to underpriced material by designating the amount of Chinese polysilicon that can enter the market duty-free. This approach does nothing to counter China’s anti-competitive, market-manipulative tactics, and instead institutionalizes dependence on an adversary while leaving American industry and workers out to dry. leaving American industry and workers out to dry.

As PV Tech recently noted, policymakers face key design questions for the 232: Will restrictions only cover raw polysilicon or extend to wafers, cells, and modules? Will enforcement differ by region, creating carve-outs for “friendly” exporters? Those questions are irrelevant if the U.S. begins with a quota for Chinese content - undermining the very goal of the Section 232 investigation, which is to address national security vulnerabilities associated with import reliance. In addition, a quota signals an interest in this cheaper material despite the ramifications of this dependence, leading importers to also relabel shipments, reroute through third countries, and exploit country-of-origin loopholes. That is not a trade remedy; it’s a blueprint for circumvention.

As with rare earths, we have seen what happens when the U.S. becomes dependent on a foreign adversary. Repeating mistakes that hurt existing domestic capacity in the interest of cheaper material is a short-term political compromise with long-term implications for U.S. competitiveness and technological leadership. Working closely with our G-7 partners presents an opportunity to coordinate restrictions on Chinese-origin or -linked polysilicon, close circumvention pathways, and create a unified front among free-market economies to prevent dependence on artificially low-cost polysilicon fraught with abusive labor regimes and environmental negligence.

The United States does not need half-measures. It needs clear, uncompromising enforcement that restores domestic market confidence. A full prohibition on imports of Chinese-origin and -linked polysilicon and derivatives ensures a competitive, transparent, and reliable supply chain for the material, unlocking a new era of advanced technologies. Anything less will leave American manufacturing expertise vulnerable, American jobs on the line, and America’s national security at risk.

Emma Bishop is the President of the Advanced Materials Security Council (AMSC) and a Vice President at Venn Strategies. Alex Rubin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 21:20

One-Party-Rule Maryland Democrats Ignore Power Bill Crisis, Push Ahead With Slavery Reparations Study

Instead of addressing the state’s mounting crises, from fiscal mess, soaring power bills, and exodus of residents to violent crime and illegal aliens, unhinged Democrats in Annapolis spent their time on Tuesday overriding Gov. Wes Moore’s veto of Senate Bill 587, creating a reparations commission to study how Maryland should address slavery and racial discrimination.

What better way to spend precious time as the year winds down? Many thought the entire reparations and wealth-redistribution grift was over. Apparently, not in Maryland.

Democrats in the state still cannot read the tea leaves and remain hellbent on pushing a continued state-killing agenda that has unleashed mounting crises, such as the growing deficit crisis, continued exodus of residents to red states, and a power bill crisis.

All of this is happening under one-party left-wing rule, where accountability is nonexistent in what has effectively become a state run by Democratic kings.

Moore had vetoed the Senate Bill 587 in May, arguing that Maryland has already studied the legacy of slavery extensively and should focus on direct policies to reduce racial disparities rather than launching another commission.

"Democrats have launched another spending spree, starting with an unnecessary special session and then forcing through a misguided Reparations Commission," conservative state representative Nino Mangione wrote on Facebook. "Even the big-spending Governor knew this was a bad idea. Voters should remember who supported this waste and hold them accountable at the ballot box."

Conservative state representative Matthew Morgan stated, "This bill betrays the original intention, the unifying event of the civil rights movement. It's immoral, and it's fiscally ruinous to this state, and it sends a message to the generations out there now in Maryland that if you're concerned about fairness, dignity, opportunity in this state, to flee Maryland."

Today, the Maryland Freedom Caucus was in Annapolis for a Special Session to elect a new Speaker of the House and take up any vetoes from the governor. The most important of the day was SB587 - the Maryland Reparations Commission. This bill will divide Marylanders along racial… pic.twitter.com/o8nadR3q3v

— Maryland Freedom Caucus (@MDFreedomCaucus) December 17, 2025

The commission will study potential reparations, including apologies, direct payments, property tax rebates, childcare support, debt forgiveness, and higher-education tuition assistance. It will issue a preliminary report by January 1, 2027, a final report by November 1, 2027, and sunset in summer 2028.

The Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland hailed the override in an X post.

LBCMD applauds the General Assembly’s override of the veto of the Maryland Reparations Commission (SB 587), which will now become law in our state. This landmark action establishes a rigorous & comprehensive plan for reparations and marks MD’s first-ever step toward reparations. pic.twitter.com/RL1ftjPeOD

— Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland (@BlackCaucusMD) December 16, 2025

Residents are fleeing the state (read report), as smart money recognizes that one-party Democratic rule has sent it what may be a terminal decline.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 20:30

67% Of Canadians Say Cost Of Living In Their Region Is Worst They've Seen

Authored by Jennifer Cowan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Nearly seven in every 10 Canadians are identifying the cost of living in their area as a major issue, according to a newly released survey.

A person pushes a shopping cart through the produce section of a grocery store in Toronto, on Nov. 22, 2022. Carlos Osorio/Reuters

An Abacus Data poll found that 67 percent of the 1,500 people surveyed earlier this month said the cost of living in their area is the worst they can ever remember it being. Another 21 percent say the cost of living is bad where they live, although they can recall periods when it was even more challenging.

Only 11 percent say the cost of living is not bad, the survey said.

A recent poll in the United States found that 46 percent of Americans say the cost of living is the most challenging they can recall, which suggests that Canadians are experiencing this pressure even more intensely, Abacus Data CEO David Coletto said in the survey report.

Canadians polled also said the cost of living should be the federal government’s top priority. Sixty-two percent of people polled identified it as one of their top three issues compared to health care at 40 percent, and economic growth at 34 percent.

Housing affordability was fourth on the list at 25 percent, followed by immigration and the Canada-U.S. trade relationship at 24 percent.

Food and Housing Prices Top Concerns

The cost of groceries play a major role in the cost of living and Canadians largely cited food prices as a contributing factor to the rising cost of living, Coletto said.

“The most widely cited concern is grocery prices, selected by 81 percent of Canadians,” he wrote. “Food prices are the most universal and emotionally resonant cost because they are unavoidable and visible every week.”

He noted that the concern rises sharply with age, from 61 percent of those in the 18 to 29 age group to 93 percent of those who are 60 and older.

The survey results were released the same day as new data from Statistics Canada indicated an increase in food prices in November, following a similar rise in October.

Food prices from stores experienced a year-over-year increase of 4.7 percent in November following a rise of 3.4 percent the previous month, StatCan said.

Housing expenses, such as rent, mortgage payments, and property prices, was the second most-frequently cited cost-of-living issue, accounting for 50 percent overall.

“Here the generational divide is clearer,” Coletto said. “Six in 10 Canadians under 30 cite housing as a major pressure, compared with fewer than four in 10 among those aged 60 and over.”

While other costs were mentioned as a concern by those surveyed, they held less significance than food or housing costs. Still, utility bills, household item prices, health-care costs, transportation costs, insurance bills, and debt repayments are all on Canadians’ radar, the poll found.

“While affordability is a shared concern, what people mean by affordability varies by life stage,” Coletto said. “Messages that treat the cost of living as a single problem risk missing the specific pressure points that different audiences feel most acutely.”

Political Impact

The increasing cost of living has been identified as the primary concern nationwide; however, this issue is especially pronounced in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, according to the poll’s findings.

A significant majority across all age demographics said affordability should be a primary focus for the federal government, Coletto said. Younger Canadians tend to associate this issue with housing affordability, whereas older Canadians are more inclined to connect it with health care and Canada’s trade relationship with the United States.

Many Canadians see affordability as a structural and global issue rather than merely the consequence of a single government’s choices, which mitigates blame, despite ongoing high levels of frustration, Coletto said. But he warned that could change over time.

“For now, the cost of living remains a warning light rather than a red light for the Carney government,” he wrote. “But the intensity of feeling, combined with seasonal pressures and fragile household finances, means the issue is unlikely to fade quietly into the background.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 20:05

Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.

Thursday:
• At 8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released.  There were 236,000 initial claims last week.

8:30 AM ET, The Consumer Price Index for November from the BLS.  The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in CPI, and a 0.2% increase in core CPI.  The consensus is for CPI to be up 3.1% year-over-year and core CPI to be up 3.1% YoY.
8:30 AM: the Philly Fed manufacturing survey for December. The consensus is for a reading of 2.2, up from -1.7.

11:00 AM: the Kansas City Fed manufacturing survey for December.

Conrad Black: China's Expanding Influence Rekindles US Engagement In Latin America

Authored by Conrad Black via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Venezuela has followed a sharply sloping descent from being the most prosperous country in Latin America 50 years ago, based on its ample oil resources, to a catastrophic condition today. With the election of Marxist Hugo Chavez in 1999, and the succession of Nicolas Maduro as president in 2013 after Chavez’s death, approximately 20 percent of the population of Venezuela (8 million people) has fled the country and its GDP has declined by about 70 percent. It is by many yardsticks the most chronically under-performing country in the world.

The U.S. Navy warship USS Lake Erie docks at the Port of Balboa in Panama City on Aug. 29, 2025. The United States sent three warships to the region amid escalating tensions with Venezuela. Mauricio Valenzuela/AFP via Getty Images

Maduro is closely associated with the crime syndicate Tren de Aragua, and he is routinely declared by the U.S. government to be leading a narco-terrorist state whose chief occupation is trafficking slaves and the most dangerous narcotics into the United States and other countries in the Americas. The American contention is that Maduro’s conduct has been unconstitutional and he has no basis in popular support, and he is not in fact the legitimate head of the Venezuelan state. His principal occupation is held to be as an importer and exporter of narcotics and a trafficker in human lives of extraordinary barbarity. The United States has announced a reward of $50 million for the capture of Maduro, and it recognizes Venezuela’s president to be the opposition leader María Machado, who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, having with difficulty escaped from Venezuela.

For much of Latin American history, the U.S. government was largely influenced in its policy towards Latin American countries by the perceived corporate economic interest of the United States. The flamboyant and partially unbalanced Marine General Smedley Butler claimed that the U.S. Marine Corps in Latin America was, for many decades, deployed at the whim of the United Fruit Company to extract the maximum possible profit from the countries where it operated. There was some truth in this, and a number of Latin American leftist politicians, particularly Juan Peron in Argentina and Victoriano Huerta, Pancho Villa, and to some extent Plutarco Elias Calles in Mexico, opposed the United States with socialistic measures, including nationalization of foreign economic assets.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the United States to what he called the Good Neighbor Policy, which was sincere and widely appreciated. He took a relatively relaxed view of Mexican nationalization of the oil industry—mainly from Americans, provided a modest compensation was paid—and relations between the United States and Latin America were reasonably composed in the early post-war years, especially after Peron was overthrown as president of Argentina in 1955.

The rise of the Latin American communists, in particular Fidel Castro, who seized control in Havana in 1959, introduced a new era of competition in Latin America between the U.S. interest and the international communist challengers. President Kennedy founded the Alliance for Progress, and it did make some progress. Castro’s celebrated sidekick, Che Guevara, was killed by Bolivian authorities while attempting to promote land reform in 1967. And the dapper communist Salvador Allende was accused by Congress and the Supreme Court of Chile of radically violating the constitution, and died in the coup conducted by the commander of the Chilean army, General Augusto Pinochet, who stepped down as president of Chile after 17 years in 1990.

The end of the Cold War in 1991, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of international communism, was a heavy blow to the Latin American left, and for some decades the United States was effectively uninterested in Latin American politics, no matter how hostile to the United States some of the region’s countries became. The United States viewed Chavez in Venezuela, the semi-communist Bolivian Eva Morales, the returning Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the communist Chilean president Gabriel Boric, and Brazil’s veteran leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with indifference.

With the rise of China as a meddlesome country and the emphasis on strategic minerals and other vital supplies, including oil, the United States has snapped out of its torpor about what it considers to be the profoundly boring and frequently juvenile political antics of Latin America. It has been encouraged in this by the victory of the tremendously colorful libertarian capitalist Javier Milei as president of Argentina. The young president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has also attracted its interest, as has the new conservative president of Chile, José Kast, and as did the immediate former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro.

The United States has made it clear that it will not tolerate the installation of foreign military bases in Latin America, nor a policy that withholds from Washington access to any natural resources it considers to be essential. The Organization of American States (OAS) has often had a leftist majority, but the United States itself has made it clear that it does not consider ostensible Latin American political leaders who are in fact chiefly preoccupied in their vocations as narco-terrorists and slave traffickers to be worthy of any protections set up for them by international organizations. The U.S. government demonstrated when they seized the president of Panama, Manuel Noriega, in 1989 and ultimately imprisoned him as an industrial-level narcotics importer into the United States, that they weren’t much interested in what the OAS thought about it.

The United States has tired of attempting to see the Latin American countries in a nation-building role, although the current administration is strongly supporting President Milei in Argentina now. But the U.S. government under both major parties has made clear that those South American political leaders who antagonize the United States by joining forces with the chief terrorist and narcotics organizations can count on rather unsportsmanlike responses from Washington.

In the current circumstances between the United States and Venezuela, there can be little doubt that President Trump will intervene to assist the majority of Venezuelans who are opposed to the government, and will continue to treat the regime as a criminal enterprise. Maduro is unlikely to last long and will not be much lamented, least of all in Venezuela.

Tyler Durden Wed, 12/17/2025 - 19:15