| To: Bill who wrote (1536414) | 5/2/2025 3:39:19 PM | | From: sylvester80 | | | | WSJ: America's oil industry in serious decline, thanks to POS Trump
alternet.org
Ailia Zehra
May 02, 2025
The collective stock value of America's oil and gas firms reportedly declined by over $280 billion following the announcement of President Donald Trump's controversial tariff policy.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that this drop took place between April 2, the day Trump announced the tariff measures, and this Monday.
This amount exceeds the market capitalization of Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the United States. The oil industry's total market value is said to have fallen more than any other major sector.
"Among the biggest U.S. oil companies, Exxon and Chevron shares have declined 11% and 18%, respectively. Oil-field services giant Schlumberger and its top rivals, Halliburton and Baker Hughes, have fallen between 21% and 23%. Those companies are bellwethers for activity in the U.S. oil patch," noted the WSJ report, written by Benoît Morenne, Collin Eaton and Andrew Mollica.
The report further said U.S. oil prices dropped 19 percent in April to $58.21 a barrel. This is the lowest level to which the prices have been in over four years.
Several economists expect that tariffs imposed by Trump will trigger a worldwide economic slowdown, leading to decreased demand for crude oil. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its partners plan to increase their production by over 400,000 barrels daily starting in May, according to the report.
"Before Trump came into office, oil production in most U.S. crude regions was set to decline because of maturing fields and dwindling sweet spots. Oil executives expect Trump’s policies to accelerate this trend, including in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, the largest oil field in the country," the report adds. |
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| To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (1536429) | 5/2/2025 3:49:41 PM | | From: Broken_Clock | | | | We know who your friends are in high places.
Reverend Moon: Cult leader, CIA asset, and Bush family friend is dead
by Bob Fitrakis
September 4, 2012
The death of Reverend Sun Myung Moon hopefully ends one of the strangest chapters in U.S. security industrial complex history. The self-proclaimed "Messiah" who owned dozens of businesses including Kahr Arms, and who once claimed to have presided over Jesus' wedding posthumously in order to get the Christian savior into heaven, was ultimately a front in the United States for friends in the CIA like George Herbert Walker Bush.
Moon founded the Washington Times newspaper in 1982 and the Washington Post went out of its way to avoid any mention of the "the dark side of the Moon" upon his death Monday, September 3, 2012 at age 92. When George W. Bush faltered in New Hampshire in early 2000, it was Moon's shadowy cultish right-wing network that came to its rescue in South Carolina. Moon's forces helped turn a certain primary defeat into a double-digit victory by spreading Moonies, his zombie-like followers, throughout the state. As the Washington Post reported, "An array of conservative groups have come to reinforce Bush's message with phone banks, radio ads, and mailings of their own."
Meanwhile, Moon's Washington Times ran the headline "Bush scoffs at assertion he moved too far right." The bizarre, almost unbelievable political alliance between the Bush family and Rev. Moon is one of the dirty little secrets of CIA involvement in U.S. domestic politics.
To understand the historical significance of Rev. Moon and his Moonies, one must start with Ryoichi Sasakawa, identified in a 1992 Frontline investigative report as the key money source behind Moon's far-flung world religious/business empire. Sasakawa bragged to Time magazine that he was "the world's richest fascist."
In the 1930s, Sasakawa was one of Japan's leading fascists. He organized a private army of 1500 men equipped with 20 war planes. His followers were Japan's version of Mussolini's Black Shirts. Sasakawa was a key figure in leading Japan into World War II and was an "uncondemned Class-A war criminal." Following WW II, he was captured and imprisoned for war crimes. According to U.S. documents, Sasakawa was suddenly freed with another accused war criminal, Yoshio Kodama, a prominent figure in Japan's organized crime syndicate, the Yakuza. They were freed in 1948, one year after the National Security Act established the CIA as the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In January 1995, Japan's KYODO News Service uncovered documents establishing that Kodama's release coincided with an agreement he had made with U.S. military intelligence two months earlier to serve as an informant. Declassified documents link Kodama's release to the CIA.
During WW II, Kodama activities, according to the U.S. Army counterintelligence records consisted of "systematically looting China of its raw materials" and dealing in heroin, guns, tungsten, gold, industrial diamonds and radium. Both Sasakawa's and Kodama's CIA ties are a reoccurring theme in their relationship with Rev. Moon.
In 1997, Congressman Donald Fraser launched an investigation into Moon's cult. The 444-page Congressional report alleged Moonie involvement with bribery, bank fraud, illegal kickbacks, and arms sales. The report revealed that Moon's 20,000-member Unification Church was a creation of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). The Moonies were working with KCIA Director Kim Chong Phil as a political instrument to influence U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. CIA was the agency primarily responsible for founding the KCIA after WW II. The Moon organization has denied any link with the U.S. intelligence agencies or the Korean government.
Moon, who is Korean, and his two fascist Japanese buddies Kodama and Sasakawa, worked together in the early 1960s to form the Asian People's Anti-Communist League with the aid of KCIA agents. The League allegedly used Japanese organized crime money and financial support from Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. The League concentrated its efforts on uniting fascist and right-wing militarists into an anti-Communist force throughout Asia.
In 1964, League funds established Moon's Freedom Center in the United States. Kodama served as a chief advisor to the Moon's subsidiary Win Over Communism, an organization that served as a conduit to protect Moon's South Korean financial investments. Sasakawa acted as Win Over Communism's Chair.
In 1966, the League merged with another fascist organization, the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations. The merger begat the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Later, in the 1980s, the retired U.S. Major General John Singlaub emerged from the shadows of the League to become caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal. As Chairman of the WACL, Singlaub enlisted soldiers of fortune and other paramilitary groups to support the Contra cause in Nicaragua against the Sandinistas.
Moon's Freedom Center served as the headquarters for the League in the U.S. During the Iran-Contra hearings, the League was described as a "multi-national network of Nazi war criminals, Latin American death squad leaders, North American racists, and anti-Semites and fascist politicians from every continent."
Working with the KCIA, Moon made his first trip to the U.S. in 1965 and shockingly obtained an audience with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Both "Ike" and former President Harry S. Truman lent their names to letterhead of the Moon-created Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation. In 1969, Moon and Sasakawa jointly formed the Freedom Leadership Foundation, a pro-Vietnam War organization that lobbied the U.S. government.
In the 1970s, Moon earned notoriety in the so-called Koreagate scandal. Female followers of the Unification Church were accused of entertaining and horizontally lobbying U.S. Congressmen while keeping confidential files on those they "lobbied" at a Washington Hilton Hotel suite rented by the Moonies. The U.S. Senate held hearings concerning Moon's "programmatic bribery of U.S. officials, journalists, and others as part of an operation by the KCIA to influence the course of U.S. foreign policy." The Fraser report documented that Moon was "paid by the KCIA to stage demonstrations at the United Nations and run pro-South Korean propaganda campaigns." The Congressional investigator for the Fraser report said, "We determine that their (Moonies') primary interest, at least in the U.S. at that time, was not religion at all but was political, it was an attempt to gain power, influence and authority."
After Ronald Reagan's presidential victory in 1980, Moon's political influence increased dramatically. Vice President George Bush, former CIA director, invited Moon as his guest to the Reagan inauguration. Bush and Moon shared unsavory links to South American underworld figures. In 1980, according to the investigative magazine I.F., the Moon organization collaborated with a right-wing military coup in Bolivia that established the region's first narco-state.
Moon's credentials soared in conservative circles. In 1982, with the inception of the propaganda tabloid the Washington Times. Vice President Bush immediately saw the value of forging an alliance with the politically powerful Moon organization, an alliance that Moon claims made Bush president. One former-Moonie website claims that during the 1988 Bush-Dukakis battle, Rev. Moon threatened his followers that they would be moved out of the United States if the evil Dukakis won.
Moon himself lacked clean hands. Moon was convicted of income tax evasion in 1982 and spent a year in a U.S. jail. Also in 1982, the Moon organization based at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio helped elect John Kasich, now Ohio's governor, to the U.S. Congress in 12th district. During the Gulf War, the Moonie-sponsored American Freedom Coalition organized "support the troops" rallies throughout the country.
The Frontline documentary identified the Washington Times as the most costly piece in Moon's propaganda arsenal, with losses estimated as high as $800 million. Still, the documentary asserts that his old friend Sasakawa's virtual monopoly over the Japanese speedboat gambling industry allowed money to continuously flow into U.S. coffers.
The Bush-Moonie connection caused considerable controversy in September 1995 when the former President announced he would be spending nearly a week in Japan on behalf of a Moonie front organization, the Women's Federation for World Peace, founded and led by Moon's wife.
Bush downplayed accusations of Moonie brain-washing and coercion. The New York Times noted that Bush's presence "is seen by some as lending the group [Moonies] legitimacy."
Long-time Moonie member S.P. Simmonds wrote an editorial for the Portland Press Herald noting that Bushes "didn't need the reported million dollars paid by Moon and were well aware of the Church's history." Other news sources placed the figure for the former President's presence at $10 million. Bush shared the podium with Moon's wife and addressed a crowd of 50,000 in the Tokyo dome. Bush told the faithful "Reverend and Mrs. Moon are engaged in the most important activities in the world today."
The following year, Moon bankrolled a series of "family values" conferences from Oakland to Washington D.C. The San Francisco Chronicle reported, "In Washington, Moon opened his checkbook to such Republican Party mainstays as former President Gerald Ford and George Bush, GOP presidential candidate Jack Kemp, and Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed."
Purdue University Professor of Sociology Anson Shupe, a long-time Moon-watcher, said, "The man accused of being the biggest brainwasher in America has moved into mainstream Republican Americana."
Moon proclaimed at his family values conferences that he was only one who knew "all the secrets of God." One of them, according to the Chronicle was that "the husband is the owner of his wife's sex organs and vice versa."
"President Ford, President Bush, who attended the inaugural World Convention of the Family Federation for World Peace" and all you distinguished guests are famous, but there's something that you do know now," the Chronicle quoted Moon as saying. "Is there anyone here who dislikes sexual organs? . . . Until now you may not have thought it virtuous to value the sexual organs, but from now, you must value them."
In November 1996, Bush the Elder arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, amid controversy over a newly-created Spanish language Moon weekly newspaper called Tiempos del Mundo. Bush smoothed things over as the principle speaker at the paper's inaugural dinner on November 23rd.
The former president then traveled with Moon to neighboring Uruguay to help him open a Montevideo seminary to train 4200 young Japanese women to spread the word of the Unification Church across Latin America. The young Japanese seminarians were later accused of laundering $80 million through a Uruguayan bank, according to the St. Petersburg Times. The Times also reported that when Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University faced bankruptcy, Moon bailed it out with millions of dollars of loans and grants.
In 1997 the New York Times wrote that Moon "has been reaching out to conservative Christians in this country in the last few years by emphasizing shared goals like support for sexual abstinence outside of marriage and opposition to homosexuality." Moon also appealed to Second Amendment advocates. In March 1999, the Washington Post reported that the cult leader owned the lucrative Kahr Arms company through Saeilo Inc.
It's the shadowy network around the Moonies and the CIA that helped propel both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush into the presidency. Recently the "Messiah's" newspaper has spent most of its time attacking President Obama.
Besides the Washington Times, the Unification Church had business holdings including the United Press International (UPI). Moon was often shown in the mainstream media presiding over mass marriages of his followers. More importantly was his marriage of convenience to the CIA and the Bush family. His corruption of American politics lives on. |
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| To: sylvester80 who wrote (1536435) | 5/2/2025 3:51:51 PM | | From: Tenchusatsu | | | | Sly, from the article,
The report further said U.S. oil prices dropped 19 percent in April to $58.21 a barrel. Just for context, there is a $60 price cap imposed on RuZZian oil. That's the level at which RuZZian oil would not be profitable to the PooTin regime, according to the powers who imposed said cap.
Only a complete and utter dumbass could tank the global economy to the point where even the market price of oil is falling below $60.
Tenchusatsu |
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| To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (1536438) | 5/2/2025 3:57:31 PM | | From: Broken_Clock | | | | Only a complete and utter dumbass could tank the global economy to the point where even the market price of oil is falling below $60.
That's called 'bringing down inflation'
you're welcome!
DJT |
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| To: Broken_Clock who wrote (1536397) | 5/2/2025 4:19:08 PM | | From: Tenchusatsu | | | | The only way to deal with MAGA cucks is with the facts:
Judge charged with obstructing immigration agents, escalating Trump’s fight with judiciary (PBS)
And Judge Dugan told agents to talk to the chief judge. She allowed the undocumented immigrant to exit through a jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz later in the public hallway and at one point a DA agent even rode in the elevator with Flores-Ruiz and with his attorney. In other words, the jury door led to a public hallway, where agents were already there tracking Flores-Ruiz's whereabouts.
Like I said, this jury door didn't lead to some "back alley" where "bad hombres" can avoid law enforcement.
As usual, the facts point to a reality that's a lot less dramatic than what Attack Bitch Pam Bondi is claiming.
More from the PBS article:
I spoke to former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa, and she believed that both charges could be an uphill battle for the Justice Department in court because it's hard to prove corrupt intent. And she questioned whether the Trump administration was not very focused on the merits of the case and more focused on the signal that it could send. But hey, Judge Dugan is "ugly," so she must be corrupt, unlike the oh-so-beautiful Bondi, AMIRITE?
Tenchusatsu |
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| From: rdkflorida2 | 5/2/2025 4:45:17 PM | | | | | | | Per Bloomberg guest. Approx. 90% of Christmas decorations come from China. Are they going to cost 145% MORE this year? It could get really ugly really fast. How much is left of those 90 days?? |
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| From: Eric | 5/2/2025 5:07:37 PM | | | | | | 
ChatGPT generated landscape sleek cartoon of Consumer comparison image: a Chinese buyer walking confidently toward a sleek modern car labeled Chinese EV and away from a stodgy car labeled US ICE
China’s EV Revolution Left US Automakers Behind — Trump Just Sped It Up
1 hour ago
Michael Barnard 4 Comments
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In the early 2010s, China was the promised land for American automakers. General Motors sold more vehicles there than in its home country. Buick, a brand fading into irrelevance in North America, was reborn as a prestige marque in Chinese cities. Ford had late but strong momentum, while Chrysler quietly moved metal through joint ventures. For a while, it looked like Detroit’s future was tethered to China’s rising middle class, and that America’s combustion engine muscle would fuel another golden age, just on different soil. That future didn’t materialize, but Trump 2.0’s trade war and Chinese nationalist pride did.
Chart of Q1 Chinese vehicles sales 2010 to 2025 by author
The numbers speak with a clarity few corporate strategy memos ever achieve. In Q1 2014, American-branded internal combustion vehicles sold in China in volumes approaching 1.2 million. By Q1 2025, that number had collapsed to around 250,000. This wasn’t a momentary blip or a COVID hangover. It was a structural collapse. While the total Q1 auto market in China hit new highs — over 7.4 million vehicles in early 2025 — American ICE brands lost four out of every five customers they had a decade earlier. Even as China’s appetite for cars grew, it stopped craving what America was offering.
It didn’t happen overnight. From 2015 onward, Chinese automakers began to grow more confident, more capable, and more focused on electrification. Meanwhile, American brands doubled down on their strengths: trucks, SUVs, and combustion powertrains. In China, those strengths were rapidly becoming liabilities. Between 2015 and 2020, internal combustion cars were already losing market share as NEVs, China’s term for battery-electric and plug-in hybrids, accelerated. But the real break came after 2020. Electrification wasn’t just happening, it was consolidating. Chinese brands like BYD, XPeng, and NIO took leadership in segments that used to be owned by the likes of Ford and GM. BYD in particular raced past most foreign brands in volume and margins. What had once been a question of if China could build world-class cars quickly became a question of why foreign brands were still trying to compete at all.
By Q1 2025, NEVs made up over 40% of new vehicle sales in China. That percentage is not just a statistical artifact; it represents a massive consumer pivot toward electric mobility. It also represents where the market is heading globally, because the EV transition’s pace will not be set by the laggards. It will be set by the leaders, and China is a full lap ahead. The retreat of American internal combustion offerings is a logical consequence of this shift. The Chinese consumer doesn’t want the past, and US brands showed up a decade too late to the future.
Another lens for this is Chinese consumer confidence and the robustness of the economy. While western media appears to be manufacturing yet another series of headlines about China’s imminent collapse, the data strongly suggests otherwise. As I noted recently, steel exports are up 6% in Q1 and reported GDP is tracking to 5.4% annually. The increase in car sales aligns with that data to show a growing economy. (For those interested in the 35 year history of “China is about to collapse” headlines, I recently found an old graphic of them and added a sampling of more recent ones. It’s available here. There’s always a market for this kind of nonsense, as Gordon Chang continuing to be listened to makes clear.)
The situation could be viewed through the lens of simple market adaptation — US automakers made the wrong bet and got out-innovated. But that alone doesn’t explain the velocity of decline between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025. In a single year, American-brand ICE sales in China dropped from roughly 300,000 to 250,000 units — a 17% decline in a market that grew 11%. This wasn’t just market dynamics; it was rejection. And that rejection has a political undertone. The trade war launched during the Trump administration and sustained across subsequent years didn’t just reshape tariffs. It reshaped sentiment. Chinese consumers began to question the value of American goods. More importantly, they began to feel that buying domestic was not just logical, but patriotic.
That 17% drop is more than any other nationality’s drop. Germany dropped by about 14%, which is still every significant, but Japan and South Korea dropped by only 4% and 1%. This isn’t just a rejection of ICE cars, although that’s certainly part of the equation. While mostly about Trump, it is likely also an Asian alignment.
The collapse in US vehicle imports to China reinforces this trend. By Q1 2025, only 8,870 American cars were imported into China, a 66% drop year over year. Tesla, despite its Shanghai Gigafactory, paused new orders for imported models as tariffs bit into price competitiveness. While American-branded cars manufactured locally still moved some volume, their positioning in the market grew precarious. Joint ventures once seen as entry points now looked more like quarantine zones, where outdated models lingered as Chinese competitors surged ahead with software-defined vehicles, EV-first architectures, and digital ecosystems tailored to domestic preferences.
Tesla’s story is more nuanced. It isn’t part of the American ICE decline directly — it only sells EVs — but its China trajectory is illustrative. Tesla’s Q1 2025 China sales fell to roughly 134,600 units in the domestic market, down slightly from a year earlier, even as it retained a strong export business. It’s still a major player, but the aura of inevitability is gone. Chinese brands now compete on price, performance, and technology, and win on all three. Tesla is still the best of the American auto sector in China, but even it is being slowly overtaken by the very companies it once outpaced. The writing is on the wall for the others.
Consumer nationalism is not a passing fad in China. When the government signaled discomfort with Apple’s dominance in government agencies, the market responded. Huawei phones surged back into favor. When Nike and Adidas faced controversy, domestic brands like Li-Ning and Anta gained ground. The auto sector was always going to follow this path, particularly given how closely it’s tied to economic policy, technology development, and national identity. Automakers are more than brands in China — they’re symbols of industrial strength. That GM and Ford were still offering ICE cars as their primary portfolio made them not just old-fashioned, but politically tone-deaf.
It’s worth remembering that other countries have felt this backlash. South Korean automakers were gutted in China after the THAAD missile defense spat in 2017. Hyundai and Kia lost half their market share almost overnight. Japanese brands saw similar crashes during territorial disputes. The American case has been slower, but the outcome is converging. The trust has eroded. The value proposition has evaporated. The domestic alternatives are now better and carry the advantage of national solidarity. That’s not a fight Detroit is equipped to win.
The implications extend beyond sales figures. Losing China means losing access to the most advanced EV ecosystem in the world. It means losing scale in battery supply chains, losing exposure to fast-cycle software innovation, and losing visibility into the competitive dynamics that will shape global transportation. Even if Ford or GM succeed in North America with electrification, they are playing on a smaller field. And the scale that Chinese EV makers are achieving now will enable them to price more aggressively and out-innovate more quickly in every export market from Southeast Asia to Europe. American automakers, having once used China to underwrite their global ambitions, are now watching from the sidelines as China builds the future without them.
Some will argue there’s still time. That American brands could pivot, bring competitive EVs to market, reconfigure joint ventures, and rebuild trust. But that underestimates the power of consumer perception and policy momentum. China’s EV subsidies may have tapered, but its industrial policy remains sharply focused. It has already chosen its winners, and they are mostly homegrown. The window for re-entry is not closed, but it’s narrowing fast.
The American ICE collapse in China is not an isolated market failure. It’s a bellwether for what happens when incumbents mistake momentum for immunity. It’s a case study in how geopolitics, innovation, and consumer behavior intersect. It’s also a mirror: a reflection of what happens when you try to sell yesterday’s machines in tomorrow’s marketplace. The Chinese buyer has moved on. The question now is whether the American automaker can even catch up, or whether it will just keep looking in the rearview mirror, wondering where the market went.
Personally, my bet is on US cars only having a market inside the weed-filled protectionist domestic market. That’s what’s going to happen with American-manufactured batteries, solar panels and wind turbines too. Meanwhile, every other country in the world will increase its trade with China, selling them the products they want under an increasing number of free trade deals and buying more Chinese products. The United States is isolating itself and as I noted regarding the sane-washing of the tariffs, the logic for doing so is missing.
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