The EU faces a growing budget squeeze after borrowing hundreds of billions for pandemic recovery and Ukraine. Rising repayment costs threaten future spending and rushed payouts raise fraud risks, its chief auditor has warned. Brussels is nevertheless seeking billions more for Kiev.
Speaking to Rapporteur, Tony Murphy, president of the European Court of Auditors, described the budget situation as a “pressure cooker,” with EU debt potentially reaching €1 trillion (1.12 trillion) by the end of 2027. The bloc’s debt stood at €739 billion (825 billion) in 2025, up from €601 billion ($671 billion) a year earlier.
“You have to pay it back at some time. It’s not free money,” Murphy said. He emphasized that “it’s real money that has to be paid back.”
However, concerns have repeatedly been raised about the EU getting back any of the billions it has spent on Ukraine, including its recent €90 billion ($100 billion) loan, which Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico recently slammed as “gifts” that Ukraine will “never pay back.”
Kiev is required to repay the loan only after receiving Russian reparations – something Moscow has vehemently ruled out. Ukraine’s own former Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov has also acknowledged that such scenarios are “just fairy tales” and that Brussels will never get its money back, which is being actively embezzled by Kiev.
The EU, however, must still repay the money it borrowed. According to Murphy, servicing pandemic debt alone would consume 8% of the bloc’s proposed 2028–2034 budget and governments have yet to agree on new revenue to cover the repayments, leaving Brussels with less money for other priorities.
The squeeze comes as households and businesses continue to face high energy costs following Europe’s break with Russian supplies, compounded by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Murphy also warned about how quickly money is being spent. He called the requirement to process €90 billion in remaining pandemic recovery payments by December “crazy,” describing the impending payouts as a “tsunami.”
Pressure to meet deadlines could also encourage weaker checks and more abuse, he said, as European prosecutors are already investigating hundreds of suspected fraud cases involving recovery funds.
Despite the crisis, Brussels is again looking for more money for Kiev after Vladimir Zelensky requested another €70 billion ($78 billion) for 2027, beyond existing commitments. European Council President Antonio Costa said Friday that the EU expects to cover roughly two-thirds, with a decision potentially coming in November.
Pakistan has reopened a major border crossing with Iran that handles key energy and commodity supplies between the two countries amid improved security in the region.
Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported on Sunday that the Gabd-Rimdan border crossing, also known as Gate 250, in the country’s Gwadar region, had reopened a day earlier following a weeklong suspension that began on October 17.
The report quoted Mir Naveed Jan Kalmati, president of the Gwadar Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as saying that import and export operations between Pakistan and Iran had resumed.
It said the decision came amid dwindling LPG supplies in Pakistan ahead of the winter season.
The closure of the border crossing on October 17 left hundreds of trucks stranded on both sides of the border.
An attack was also reported in the region earlier this week, when unidentified gunmen targeted parked trucks, setting dozens ablaze and damaging several others.
Dawn said local administrators had deployed additional forces to protect trade convoys before reopening the border crossing.
Meanwhile, Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, said in a post on his X account on Sunday that the disruption to cross-border trade between the two countries was mainly due to changes in Islamabad’s import rules.
He denied that Iran had made any decision to reduce LPG exports to Pakistan.
“… Changes in the implementation of Pakistan’s E-Form procedure for imports from Iran have created a situation in which traders are effectively and literally unable to dispatch cargo from Iran to Pakistan,” Amiri Moghadam said.
He said cross-border trade between Iran and Pakistan “serves the mutual interests of both countries and their people,” adding that Iran had made every possible effort to facilitate and promote trade with its “brotherly” neighbor.
Even as the US diesel deal with Russia that was brokered by Donald Trump could help bring the price of oil down, the Democrats’ Russophobia “is leading them to try to sabotage the deal,” Dr. Jeremy Kuzmarov, managing editor of CovertAction Magazine, tells Sputnik.
“Trump may be making some steps at the beginning to try to end the conflict in Ukraine, whereas the Democrats, I think, want to escalate that conflict. And they are totally irrational,” he adds.
Only a small number of Democrats opposed the anti-Russian sanctions bill, arguing that it is “totally irrational and is going to have a very negative effect on the US economy.”
“This is a case in point where this hysteria about Russia and Russophobia reaches the extent that the government is actually advocating for positions that are very harmful to the American economy and to American workers or farmers — even though the Democrats purport that they are more for the working people.”
American farmers complain that they cannot stay in business due to the cost of fuel, the soaring cost of living does a number on the budgets of working Americans, and many businesses in the US are struggling.
“Some of that also has to do with the war spending of the government and all the money they put into warfare, including Ukraine. That is the thing that Democrats are so hypocritical about. Because they just want to spend more and more billions on Ukraine,” notes Kuzmarov.
“That is what has been ruining the American economy and American society over decades now — the excessive military spending. The Democrats undercut their claim to be for the working people or for farmers if they are trying to sabotage an economic arrangement that would actually work to bring the cost of fuel down.”
Meanwhile, more and more Americans may start seeing the numerous opportunities for economic deals with Russia, potentially leading them to “put more and more pressure on the government to ease relations, restore regular diplomatic relations, end the war in Ukraine, stop the sanctions, and restore ties for the benefit of both countries.”
The Europeans are also “increasingly protesting their governments’ policies and the position they have taken against Russia,” seeing how purchasing more Russian oil and gas would have been beneficial to the European economies.
American people ended up being the losers in their government’s scheme to weaken Russia through the Ukrainian conflict, with billions of dollars that are “needed here in the United States” being lost in the process.
“Ukraine has sacrificed generations of its youth now, its economy has been devastated, and it has become more of an autocratic country under Volodymyr Zelensky,” Kuzmarov says, noting that US Democrats support the “destruction of Ukraine” rather than Ukraine itself.
“That has been destructive for everybody except the weapon contractors and maybe the Wall Street financial firms that own those weapon contractors.”
On October 22, The Washington Post reported that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had asked companies involved in Russian diesel imports to preserve relevant documents as Democrats prepared for a possible probe.
VW investment, creating 4,500 jobs in Georgia, comes amid Trump’s damaging tariffs, intense Chinese competition and costly shift towards EVs
Audi has said it will spend $4bn (£3bn) to build its first factory in the US, as its parent company, Volkswagen, struggles with the impact of steep tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
The German brand’s chief executive, Gernot Döllner, joined Trump on stage at a campaign rally on Saturday night to announce the factory in Macon, Georgia, in an unusual move by a big European brand just days before the US midterm elections.
Washington pressured India to cut Russian oil imports, threatened tariffs, and strained a vital partnership. Now, with trade negotiations stalled and energy security under pressure, Rubio’s visit raises a bigger question: is the US repairing relations with India, or simply recalibrating its priorities? The tariff king is now facing repercussions. Since January 2025, President Donald […]
Good news, everyone. The war is over, at least in the United Arab Emirates. That is the only conclusion you could draw from this month’s headlines. On October 14, Bloomberg reported the International Energy Agency’s estimate that UAE oil supply hit a record 5.3 million barrels a day in September. Fujairah, the port the Emirates built so they would never have to worry about the Strait of Hormuz, loaded a record 2.62 million barrels a day. The giant Ruwais refinery was declared back at full capacity at the end of August. Pop the (non-alcoholic) champagne.
Then Karl Miller sent me his October 22 assessment of the UAE’s oil and gas system, and spoiled the party. The Emirates have indeed recovered their crude exports. What they have not recovered is everything else. The gas business is still limping, the petrochemical plants are starving for feedstock, and the fuel reserves that are supposed to carry the country through the next attack have been drained to about a third of their prewar level. The UAE is setting production records with its gas light on.
The safe haven that wasn’t
For years the UAE sold itself as the Switzerland of the Gulf: stable, diversified, insulated from the region’s chaos, a place where hedge funds and oil majors could sleep soundly. Then came 2026. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, UAE crude and condensate production fell from about 4.0 million barrels a day at the start of the year to an average of 2.4 million in March through May. A 40 percent collapse. Switzerland, it turns out, is within drone range of Iran.
The damage list reads like a sightseeing tour of Emirati industry. The Ruwais refining complex caught fire on March 10 and shut down. The Shah sour-gas plant, built to process 1.28 billion cubic feet a day, burned on March 16. The Habshan gas complex, the beating heart of the UAE’s gas system, was hit on April 3 and, in case anyone missed it, again on April 8. Borouge’s petrochemical plant was damaged on April 5. The Emirates Global Aluminium smelter went dark on March 28. And on May 17, a drone hit an electrical installation supporting the Barakah nuclear power plant, which is the sort of sentence nobody in Abu Dhabi ever wanted to read in a Security Council transcript.
Then there is Fujairah, the bypass port, the whole point of which was to keep UAE oil flowing no matter what happened at Hormuz. Reuters counts at least 19 attacks on it since the war began. In the week of March 16, loadings fell to 440,000 barrels a day. After a strike on May 4, refined-product exports essentially stopped for a month, with exactly one product tanker leaving between then and June 1. One. The insurance policy turned out to need insurance.
Available, just not working
Crude came back. Gas did not. ADNOC Gas’s second-quarter numbers compared with a year earlier: domestic gas production down 32.5 percent, export liquids such as LPG and naphtha down 54.5 percent, the company’s share of LNG down 63 percent. Export liquids sales fell from 252 to 117 trillion British thermal units. LNG sales fell about 71 percent. Revenue fell 39 percent, EBITDA 47 percent, net income 52 percent. That is $2.3 billion of revenue that evaporated in one quarter, at one company.
But my favorite statistic in Miller’s entire deck is this one. ADNOC Gas proudly reported that its assets were 99.9 percent available in the second quarter, better than the year before. Its actual asset utilization, meanwhile, fell from 80 percent to 54 percent. The plants were ready, willing and able. They just could not run, because the feedstock, the storage and the export routes they depend on had been knocked out. It is the corporate equivalent of announcing that your car is in perfect condition while it sits on blocks without wheels.
The recovery since then has been real but partial. Habshan’s gas supply was 85 percent restored as of August 10. Borouge had fixed its plant by the end of June, then discovered it had nothing to feed it, and ran at 60 percent utilization. The aluminium smelter had restarted a quarter of its pots by late August and now expects to finish the job sometime in early 2027. Repairs, as it happens, are faster than recoveries.
Running on fumes
Here is the number that should ruin a European energy minister’s weekend. On October 19, Fujairah held 7.25 million barrels of refined products. Before the war it held about 20.7 million. That is a 65 percent drop. Gasoline and naphtha stocks are down 87 percent. Fuel oil is down 53 percent. Diesel and jet fuel are down 23 percent, and fell 18 percent in a single week this month, just in time for winter.
Fujairah is not a corner gas station. It is one of the world’s great bunkering and product-trading hubs, the place where ships refuel and traders park cargoes between Asia and Europe. With a third of its normal stocks, it has about a third of its normal ability to absorb a shock. Miller’s arithmetic is unforgiving: lose a million barrels a day of export outlets with 10 million barrels of usable storage to fill, and you have roughly ten days before the oil fields have to shut in. Ten days. That is not a strategic reserve. That is a long weekend.
A bypass for a third of the traffic
The UAE’s answer to a closed Strait of Hormuz is the ADCOP pipeline from Habshan to Fujairah. It is designed to carry 1.5 million barrels a day, maybe 1.8 on a good day. ADNOC claims 4.85 million barrels a day of production capacity. So the escape hatch fits about a third of the passengers. A second pipeline is planned, for 2027, which will be a great comfort to anyone planning to hold this war in 2028.
And that record September? Some of it reflects genuine repairs. Some of it reflects the UAE’s exit from OPEC, which conveniently ended its production quotas in May. And some of it, by the IEA’s own account, came from drawing down inventories that were already at a record low. Selling your savings is a fine way to post record income for a month. It is not a business model. Meanwhile, across the region, refined-product shipments in September were 1.9 million barrels a day against 4.7 million before the war, and LPG shipments were 670,000 barrels a day against 1.5 million. The recovery is real for crude tankers. For everything else, it is a press release.
One more round, anyone?
To be fair, and Miller insists on being fair, nobody can prove that 30 to 40 percent of the UAE’s energy system is still destroyed. There is no complete public register of damage and repairs, and he gives full credit to the recoveries at Ruwais and in crude output. But the shape of the problem is plain. The UAE has rebuilt its ability to ship crude. Its gas business, its petrochemical feedstock and above all its fuel reserves remain badly depleted.
Which brings us to Washington’s latest bright idea: another round of strikes on Iran. Iran has already demonstrated, at least 19 times at Fujairah alone, that it can reach the UAE’s export system. The last time the Emirates absorbed a blow, they had 20 million barrels of products in Fujairah to soften it. Next time they will have about seven. Record output and empty tanks is not resilience. It is a country standing on the edge of a cliff and posting about the view.
The latest visit by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to India, on 20–22 October 2026, attests to the US authorities’ desire to take dynamically developing bilateral relations with New Delhi to a new level. The US Secretary of State is visiting India for the second time this year, seeking to remove a number of […]
There is a straightforward way to alleviate the social chaos sweeping Europe, as well as the war in Ukraine threatening to engulf the continent. It’s an easy fix – and it’s not shoving more white powder up Zelensky’s nose paid for by European taxpayers.
European leaders just have to find the resolve to stop fueling the war against Russia and engage in diplomacy with Moscow to establish an all-encompassing security architecture (as Russia had proposed back in December 2021). That, in turn, will salvage European nations from unsustainable debt driven by militarism and propping up a kleptocracy in Kiev, whose puppet leader is obviously degenerating from cocaine addiction.
Across Europe, cities are looking like battle zones with mass protests, public tensions, buildings burning, shops looted, riot police baton-charging crowds, and masked mobs running amok. France is bearing the brunt of street violence, but so too are Italy, Belgium, and others. Spain and Portugal are seeing their cities turned into tent camps in protests against a lack of affordable housing.
In the turmoil, it is easy to lose sight of the basic problem. People en masse are suffering from economic privation. Why can’t their individual and social needs be met in an efficient and effective manner? Why is there seemingly no money to fix broken societies?
Curfews are declared in Paris and cities across France while Italy moves to deploy soldiers in Milan to restore a semblance of order. Thousands of arrests have been made in recent days. Revolution is in the air, and so too is the sinister possibility of supposedly democratic governments flipping to become police-state dictatorships.
In this volatile, explosive situation, it is tempting to look for scapegoats.
French President Emmanuel Macron goes on national television to denounce “ultra-left groups” who he says are mindlessly trying to destroy France.
Even American President Donald Trump weighs in to claim that a once great nation (France) is being “conquered by immigrants, jihadists and communists.”
There were also predictable accusations in Western media that Russia is fomenting the unrest across Europe.
Another misdirection is to portray the European governments as cash-strapped and unable to deliver relief from the cost-of-living crisis and deteriorating public services. The governments and media tend to define the problem as one of balancing fiscal bookkeeping, overspending on social welfare, aging populations, or some other demographic factor.
European nations, we are told by pundits, are in massive debt and under pressure from bond markets to ramp up austerity by slashing public spending. The challenge for France and other governments is that they “no longer have the fiscal room to simply throw more money at these problems,” as one commentator put it.
Another commentator lamented that: “Hamstrung governments seem to have no answer to the public’s furious demands, making further discontent likely.”
In other words, we are told, “there is no alternative to austerity,” to paraphrase the late British leader Margaret Thatcher.
But that premise deceptively tells only part of the picture. The crucial part omitted is that the fiscal crunch of European governments is largely caused by the reckless funnelling of money to fuel the war in Ukraine and inordinately build up their own military forces. That wasteful misallocation of resources is “justified” by relentlessly and absurdly demonizing Russia as a “threat to Europe”. The news media play the role of amplifying the propaganda.
The media do not question, never mind expose, how Europe’s economies have been exhausted by a proxy war agenda against Russia that has involved cutting themselves off from Russian affordable energy, the lifeblood of industry, and on top of that racking up hundreds of billions in debt by propping up the endemically corrupt Kiev regime.
That regime is losing the war against Russia as it runs out of conscripts for the meat grinder. Yet, European governments are fixated on keeping the futile war going with ever more funding of the regime.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, dissembled this week by claiming that “Ukraine would have surrendered a long time ago if not for European support”. This is a tacit admission that the EU and Britain are fueling the war.
She also accused the Trump administration of forcing Ukraine into a surrender. In her soulless view, diplomacy and peace are sneered at as surrender.
European societies are deprived of financial resources for vital public services and infrastructure all in the fraudulent name of “defending” Ukraine in a war that has gone on for nearly five years. There is no end in sight if the European leaders have their way.
The European Union’s unelected bureaucracy has donated €90 billion to the Kiev regime for 2026 and 2027 alone, in addition to over €200 billion already allocated. This largesse is still not enough. The Zelensky dictatorship is calling for an extra €70 billion to be doled out, and the EU Russophobic elites are clamoring to oblige.
No wonder that European societies are visibly falling apart from underinvestment and widespread hardship from the soaring cost of living. The social implosion is a direct consequence of a policy of militarism and war, a policy that the Euro elites are running with impunity and unaccountability. That’s dictatorship by any definition.
The depiction of fiscally constrained and helpless European governments is an illusion. The constraint is not a natural condition of societies. It is the consequence of a deliberate, criminal policy of warmongering.
So spare us the scapegoating and misdirection. Spare us the curfews and calls for emergency police state powers to curb “hooligans and extremists.” That misdirection is playing into the hands of the ruling class, which has delegitimized itself by its sponsoring of war in Ukraine, its support for American aggression against Iran and Yemen, and its complicity in Israeli genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
Contrary to the politicians and pundits claiming that there is “no easy fix” to the chaos erupting in Europe, there is. It is for the European governments to stop fueling the war in Ukraine and actually manage societies according to democratic needs.
However, that rational and feasible solution is probably out of reach under the prevailing political system. The elites in control of the system are incapable of overseeing any meaningful reform. They will not engage in diplomacy to find a peaceful settlement in Ukraine with Russia.
And so the outcome seems to be either they consolidate the emerging dictatorship and quash the legitimate social demands of the people, or the people will prevail by sweeping away the corrupt regimes that masquerade as “democratic”.
Politicians may not like it, but the countries they misgovern compete with one another for businesses, people, and capital. To attract startups, entrepreneurs, and investors, governments have to offer attractive environments, or else lose out to friendlier nations. When it comes to tax competitiveness, a new report says that Estonia leads the way in first position, with the United States lagging at 17th.
Low Rates and Simplicity Make Countries More Attractive
"The structure of a country's tax code is a determining factor of its economic performance," write Alex Mengden and Luis Zarka for the Tax Foundation's International Tax Competitiveness Index 2026. "A well-structured tax code is easy for taxpayers to comply with and can promote economic development while raising sufficient revenue for a government's priorities. In contrast, poorly structured tax systems can be costly, distort economic decision-making, and harm domestic economies."
The report notes that competition among countries has resulted in widespread improvements (and some backsliding) across the world in recent years. Especially among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), marginal tax rates on corporate and individual income have declined. That said, most governments haven't given up on milking their populations, with growing reliance on payroll taxes and value-added taxes (VAT).
On the other hand, while "corporate tax base improvements have occurred in Canada, Germany, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, and the United States," France, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia have hiked corporate tax rates. Even worse, tax policy has moved in many countries from a revenue-raising measure into a weapon of economic warfare "deployed to exert economic pressure."
The Tax Foundation's index ranks countries on the degree to which they keep their tax systems competitive—with low rates—and neutral, with minimal social engineering to avoid economic distortions.
Estonia Is First, France Last, With the U.S. in the Middle
According to these criteria, Estonia scores in first place for the best tax code in the OECD for the 13th straight year. According to Mengden and Zarka, the tiny Baltic state earns this distinction for four reasons:
First, it has a 22 percent tax rate on corporate income that is only applied to distributed profits. Second, it has a flat 22 percent tax on individual income that does not apply to personal dividend income. Third, its property tax applies only to the value of land, rather than to the value of real property or capital. Finally, it has a territorial tax system that exempts 100 percent of foreign profits earned by domestic corporations from domestic taxation, with few restrictions.
By contrast, France comes in dead last with the highest top corporate tax rate (36.1 percent) in the OECD, on top of which are "multiple surtaxes and distortive production taxes." France "also applies multiple distortionary property taxes with separate levies on estates, bank assets, and financial transactions, in addition to a wealth tax on real estate. Its VAT covers about 50 percent of final consumption, and it has one of the highest VAT registration thresholds."
The United States ranks at 17, down one place from last year. Among the U.S.'s weaknesses is that its "real property tax burden is among the highest in the OECD" and "the US has a partial territorial system and does not exempt foreign capital gains income." On the plus side, Americans pay relatively low sales/consumption taxes (an average of 7.5 percent, while the OECD average is 19.4 percent).
Not discussed in depth in the index, but still important, is that the U.S. is one of two countries (along with Eritrea) that base income taxation on citizenship rather than residency. "A Canadian living in France pays French taxes, not Canadian ones. An American in France? They pay French taxes and still file with the IRS," notes Bright!Tax. The U.S. tax obligation can be offset for nonresidents, but only by jumping through more bureaucratic hoops.
By and large, countries score better on the index by keeping tax rates low and broadly applied, emphasizing simplicity, and keeping their systems neutral to raise revenue and encourage investment, rather than achieve social and political goals.
Not everybody shares the Tax Foundation's preference for low burdens and minimal complexity. In its 2022 report on Lithuania's tax system (ranked a commendable 5th by the International Tax Competitiveness Index 2026), the OECD urged the country to increase taxes on businesses and self-employed people, and to increase reporting requirements. The OECD apparently favors higher tax burdens and complexity. Keeping the OECD happy would undoubtedly make Lithuania (or any country) less attractive to investors and entrepreneurs.
The U.S. Scores Better on Overall Economic Freedom—Though It's Losing Ground
While the index's middling score for the U.S. on tax competitiveness is disappointing, if understandable, it's not the final word on a country's economic attractiveness. In the Fraser Institute's recently published Economic Freedom of the World 2026 report, the U.S. ranks a credible 5th place, based on 2024 data. It comes in after Hong Kong, Switzerland, Singapore, and New Zealand. The formerly British and now Chinese territory of Hong Kong remained in the leading position despite erosion in economic liberty to accompany its sadly decaying civil liberties status. That's a worldwide concern.
"Global economic freedom fell following the pandemic as policymakers imposed new regulations, raised barriers to trade, expanded the size of government, and then printed money to pay for spending," wrote the Fraser Institute authors, including the late James Gwartney. "While governments have begun to reverse these policies, economic freedom in the average country has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels."
Unfortunately, the U.S. is forecast to slide two positions in next year's Economic Freedom report because of "increases in the size of government, weaker protection of property rights and the rule of law, and significant restrictions on trade freedom."
Improving the U.S. tax environment might help to improve America's economic freedom score. Then again, so would reducing government's role and discontinuing protectionist policies.
Tax competitiveness is one important element of any country's overall economic freedom, which creates an attractive environment to invest, create businesses, and generate prosperity. The U.S. has long thrived because it is, in relative terms, free. That's a status worth maintaining.
Of all the arguments for protectionism, the infant industry argument probably has the strongest theoretical appeal. By protecting a new industry from its more developed foreign competition, the story goes, tariffs give domestic producers the time to grow, learn, and become efficient enough to stand on their own. Domestic consumers feel the short-term pains of higher prices, but they enjoy the long-term gains of job growth and lower prices as the new industry blossoms.
It's no secret that tariffs have driven significant price increases over the last year and a half. A study from the New York Federal Reserve finds that tariffs "contributed 2.9 percentage points to goods price inflation" and that without tariffs those prices would have slightly declined. Tariff defenders, looking for a new reason to claim these higher prices are only temporary, have reimagined the infant industry argument. Now it's being used to support trade barriers in industries that are over a century old, but the promise is exactly the same: Domestic firms need the protection so they can compete, innovate, and cut costs until prices come back down even further than they were before the tariffs.
Michael Brendan Dougherty recently made such an argument in National Review, arguing that "tariffs can, over time, bring prices below where they started." When economist Don Boudreaux called the argument "bizarre," Dougherty replied that critics had failed to acknowledge the dynamic process by which markets respond to tariffs "by adapting and cutting costs." Although he is light on specific details, he posits that the changed incentives of a "paradigm shift" in tariff policy will spur domestic competition, leading to the theorized price reduction. Of course, firms would still respond to the dynamic processes of domestic competition without a tariff wall, but the point stands.
From there, the reworked infant industry argument becomes the standard version advanced more than two centuries ago by Alexander Hamilton and his disciple Friedrich List. When Hamilton made this claim in 1791, his argument may have seemed suitable for a new nation seeking to firm up its economy and security against established European powers.
Others at the time pointed out that special interest groups—a manifestation of the "violence of faction" so thoroughly dissected in theFederalist Papers—had already begun to coalesce around the fledgling iron industry in Pennsylvania, clamoring for protective tariffs. Two years earlier, James Madison had warned about a "premature policy of stimulating manufactures" driving tariffs too high. In the end, Hamilton recommended and Congress enacted a far more moderate tariff schedule than his theoretical musings portended. American iron manufacturers received a consolation prize of a higher tariff on their competitors than the rate for most general imports. Hamiltonians have been touting the infant industry argument ever since.
Nearly 250 years later, those same infants apparently have yet to advance into adulthood. Steel, the direct successor to the founding-era iron manufacturers, remains a singular focus of President Donald Trump's protectionist tariff policies, just as it was under former President Joe Biden. And former President George W. Bush before him. Indeed, steel has been a recurring beneficiary of protectionism for most of America's existence.
This extended period of protectionist infancy suggests that the argument needs a new name. We propose the "Peter Pan industry argument" for companies that never grow up because tariffs make sure they never have to.
The question tariff advocates rarely ask is: Why do some American producers have higher costs than foreign rivals even in the face of lower-cost foreign competition? The answer comes down to specific rules and choices within particular firms and industries. Tariffs, and protectionism in general, address none of these. No industry illustrates this like steel, but it is far from the only one.
In 1947, United Steelworkers won a contract provision known as Section 2-B. Among other things, this barred mill managers from changing established work practices unless new technology required it. Steel companies tried to get rid of this in 1959, finding it difficult (given union incentives) to establish that technology required change. In response, 500,000 steelworkers went on strike for 116 days. This strike sent buyers abroad, causing 1959 to be the first year the U.S. imported more steel than it exported. One of the then-new technologies that was delayed was basic oxygen furnaces, which could produce steel far faster and cheaper than the open-hearth furnaces that were so common. In 1965, only about 17 percent of steel made in the U.S. was made using the basic oxygen furnace. Japan produced 55 percent of its steel with this faster, more efficient method.
Change finally came from a steel customer. Vulcraft, a maker of steel joists, grew tired of paying Big Steel's prices and waiting for Big Steel's deliveries. In 1969, free from steel unions and preconceived notions, the company looked for new steel-producing technologies and found the answer in the electric arc furnaces that had been adopted in much of the world throughout the 1950s and '60s. Vulcraft's parent company later renamed itself Nucor, and minimills like the ones it pioneered now make most of America's steel.
So the modern steel industry was built by a frustrated steel buyer who found a way around protected companies. In other words, the U.S. steel industry has lagged behind the technologies found around the world.
We could go on, but the broad point here is that the "relatively higher domestic production costs that made the tariff 'necessary' in the first place," as one critic put it, are often the result of preventing competition in the first place. It's odd to suggest that further preventing competition through tariffs will somehow alleviate the ills of already-prevented competition.
Tariff advocates fail to acknowledge that the ability to import steel also comes with the benefit of access to cheaper steel for steel-using industries, such as manufacturing. A 50 percent tariff on steel further closes the release valve that imported steel offers. Buyers of steel are then left to purchase more of the more expensive domestic steel. Because new steel mills take years to bring online, this causes delays and longer delivery times for manufacturers.
We don't have to wonder what happens when a country lowers its tariffs on materials used by manufacturers. India did this in the '90s, and researchers found that newly available inputs accounted for 31 percent of the new products that Indian manufacturers introduced. And what happens when the U.S. imposes tariffs on steel? Downstream U.S. firms become less competitive. This is why American businesses clamor for exemptions to tariffs, especially for tariffs on materials like steel.
Perhaps all this could be forgiven if tariffs advanced national security concerns, as tariff advocates assert. They point out that an adversarial nation could cut off supplies of critical materials during wartime and cripple America's ability to defend itself. Unfortunately, tariffs fail there too.
First, this conflates production with access. While domestic production does ensure domestic access, access can be secured without production. In the case of steel, the Commerce Department reports that in 2025, the U.S. imported steel from 79 countries, with Canada being our top foreign supplier. The top 10 sources of steel are responsible for 77.8 percent of America's steel imports. None of those countries were considered adversaries—at least not until the tariff crusades pushed these friends away. What's more, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, only 23 percent of finished steel in the U.S. was imported in 2024. Far from being exposed to foreign states' whims, American access to steel is incredibly resilient.
Second, this view ignores the positive effects of trade and globalization on national security. The Center for Strategic & International Studies finds that increased trade between countries reduces the likelihood that they'll go to war against one another. Globalization helps ensure that domestic access continues unabated should war break out, thanks to the diversity of trading partners.
When Hamilton made the infant industry argument, he at least assured us that the industry would at some point advance to adulthood and stand on its own. Steel, like so many other Peter Pan industries, has proven Madison right. These industries have refused to grow up, and it's time to stop pretending that tariffs will fix that.
The US-Israeli war on Iran has caused an “unprecedented” shock to global energy markets, removing some 3 billion barrels of oil supply, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser has warned.
The war launched in February effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil and LNG artery, sending crude prices up roughly 50%. Despite Gulf exports recovering to a reported 80% of pre-war levels, renewed attacks on vessels have kept markets on edge, with Brent hitting a five-month high above $112 this week. Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and shipping have compounded the crisis, threatening another vital trade chokepoint, the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
In an interview with Al Arabiya Business aired on Thursday, Nasser said the nearly eight-month crisis had deprived global markets of an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil.
“The impact of this crisis on energy markets is unprecedented,” he said. “We have lost around 3 billion barrels since it began. And bear in mind that the Gulf accounts for roughly 20% of global oil demand.”
The figure is equivalent to nearly a month of global oil consumption and reflects cumulative supply losses caused by disrupted shipping, reduced production and logistical bottlenecks.
With global oil inventories already below their five-year average when the war erupted, prices could have soared past $200 a barrel, Nasser warned. He credited emergency reserve releases, China’s sharp cut in seaborne oil imports and Saudi Aramco’s East-West pipeline, which bypasses Hormuz, with averting an even more severe price shock.
Nasser warned, however, that even an end to the crisis could bring fresh pressure on oil markets, as recovering consumption and a rush to replenish depleted reserves will likely fuel another demand surge.
“Once things return to normal, we expect additional demand of around 3 million barrels per day – about 2 million from consumption growth and another 1 million just to replenish the reserves countries have drawn down during the crisis,” he said, noting that the added demand could keep markets under strain long after shipping routes reopen.
Fresh escalation fears
Meanwhile, fears of another escalation are growing as US-Iran talks remain deadlocked. Reports on Wednesday claimed Washington was quietly pulling troops from bases in Jordan, Qatar and Kuwait, evacuating some diplomats and their families from Saudi Arabia and preparing similar withdrawals elsewhere. Similar precautions were taken ahead of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.
The moves follow US President Donald Trump’s rejection last month of Tehran’s proposal to reopen Hormuz in exchange for lifting the US blockade of Iranian ports, easing oil export restrictions, unfreezing Iranian assets and ending regional hostilities, including Israeli operations in Gaza and Lebanon.
Washington and Israel have since reportedly discussed another major offensive, potentially soon after the November 3 US midterms. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also openly threatened fresh strikes on Iran, even without US backing.
Part I traced a system built on the advice of four economists; even know their theories are not theology. The next half-century is a case study in what happens when that advice – however flawed – is abandoned, and in what happens to the few countries that never got the memo. Part II: Dismantling the […]
Earlier this month, Aramco’s chief executive, Amin Nasser, assured the markets that “our system is intact” and that Saudi Arabia could restore its full 12 million barrels a day of capacity within days. It is a comforting message, and Washington, European capitals and oil traders have every reason to want to believe it. It is not true.
Karl Miller has just completed a 37-slide operating assessment of Saudi Arabia’s energy system, covering everything from the oil fields to the fuel depots, as of October 20. I have read it closely. It is the most careful accounting of this damage I have seen, and it is careful in a way that should worry anyone counting on Saudi oil this winter. Miller does not count Houthi boasts, social-media videos or plumes of smoke as damage. He separates confirmed hits from claims, and he refuses to add up the design capacity of every facility that was struck as if it were all offline at once. Even with all of that discipline, the picture is grim.
A quarter of Saudi production is gone
Start with the headline number. In February, before the war, Saudi Arabia produced about 10.88 million barrels of crude a day. In September it was still producing 2.51 million barrels a day less, a drop of 23 percent. In August the shortfall was 4.64 million barrels a day, when output sank to about 6.24 million. From March through September, the Kingdom produced more than 800 million fewer barrels than it would have at its February rate. That is roughly eight days of total world oil consumption that never came out of the ground.
Aramco’s own books say the same thing. In the company’s reported figures, its liquids production fell from 10.56 million barrels a day in the first quarter to 7.57 million in the second, a 28 percent collapse in a single quarter. Natural gas and ethane fell nearly 6 percent. A company whose system was intact does not report numbers like that.
Exports followed production down. In one consistent tracking series, Saudi crude exports fell from 7.27 million barrels a day in February to 3.70 million in August, a 49 percent drop. They recovered to 5.62 million in September, but that is still 23 percent below the pre-war level.
The damage runs through the whole chain
The reason the recovery keeps stalling is that the damage is not in one place. It runs from the wellhead to the gas station.
At the front end, the Abqaiq complex, the plant that conditions most of Saudi Arabia’s light crude before it can be shipped or refined, sustained physical damage in July. In March, some 2 to 2.5 million barrels a day were curtailed across the offshore Safaniya, Marjan, Zuluf and Abu Safa fields. In April, Khurais and Manifa each lost 300,000 barrels a day.
In the middle, five of the Kingdom’s major refineries have been damaged or shut down. Ras Tanura, at 550,000 barrels a day the largest domestic refinery, burned and was shut in March. SATORP in Jubail lost three units in April, restarted at half capacity and was still running at only about 70 percent in May. SAMREF in Yanbu was hit in March. The Riyadh refinery caught fire on October 3. Jazan, a 400,000-barrel-a-day plant designed to turn out 250,000 barrels a day of ultra-low-sulfur diesel, shut down on July 27 after its power plant and tank farm were hit, and Ansar Allah attacks in August and September disrupted every attempt to restart it. Satellite imagery now shows tank damage at Petro Rabigh as well. The Juaymah gas-liquids plant, which feeds Saudi Arabia’s LPG exports, has suffered fires.
At the back end, the system for storing and moving fuel is being picked apart. Imagery of the Abha bulk plant from September 13 shows six tanks apparently destroyed and eight more damaged. A depot near Riyadh’s airport burned on September 19. Jazan’s tank clusters have been hit repeatedly.
And the East-West Pipeline, Saudi Arabia’s only way to move crude to the Red Sea and around a closed Strait of Hormuz, has been hit again and again. In April, 700,000 barrels a day of pumping capacity was knocked out. In September, repeated attacks took out three pumping stations and halted the line until a low-rate restart on September 22. On October 4 and 5, another pumping station near Khurais was reported badly damaged. The energy minister now says the line is running at 5.8 million barrels a day, against a rated 7 million. Even Miller notes that no one outside Aramco is metering the actual flow.
Why repairs don’t stick
Miller’s most important insight is that this is a system, and systems fail at their weakest link. Jazan is the clearest example. Fixing the crude units does no good if the gasification and power plant that run the refinery is still damaged, and fixing the power plant does no good if there are no tanks to put the diesel in. A refinery can be “restarted” on paper and still produce nothing useful. The same logic runs upstream. An oil field with every well intact still has to shut in if the processing plant or pumping station downstream of it is broken.
Every time Aramco gets one link repaired, another one gets hit. That is why restart announcements keep failing to show up in the production numbers.
Saudi Arabia is running out of fuel to sell
The most alarming numbers in Miller’s report are about refined products. By July, the latest month with complete data, Saudi refinery output was down 534,000 barrels a day from February, nearly 18 percent. Diesel output fell 21 percent. Diesel exports fell 47 percent, from 848,000 barrels a day to 446,000. Gasoline exports fell 40 percent.
The Saudis have been covering the gap by draining their tanks. Diesel stocks fell from 25.6 million barrels in February to 16.6 million in July, down 35 percent. Gasoline stocks fell by the same proportion. The world’s largest oil exporter more than doubled its imports of fuel oil, and it is burning more than twice as much crude directly in its power plants as it did in February. Some of that is the summer air-conditioning load, but it is not the behavior of a country with fuel to spare.
Lower stocks mean less cushion for the next attack. And there will be a next attack.
The trap Riyadh is in
Miller’s report spells out one more danger that I have not seen discussed anywhere else. If Saudi Arabia’s export outlets close, its oil has nowhere to go but its own refineries, its own power plants and its storage tanks. In July, domestic refineries and direct burning absorbed about 3.04 million barrels a day. Once the storage is full, that is roughly the ceiling on what Saudi Arabia could keep producing. Close Ras Tanura and Yanbu at the same time, and the Kingdom would have to shut in most of its oil fields. That is exactly the scenario Ansar Allah’s campaign against the pipeline, the Red Sea and the Gulf terminals is built to produce.
Why this matters to everyone else
The rest of the world is already living with the consequences. Saudi diesel exports are down by about 400,000 barrels a day, at the same moment Hormuz is restricted and Russian refineries are under drone attack. The International Energy Agency says the global diesel shortage will last well into 2027. Brent is above $100. Europe, which depends on imported diesel, is already rioting over the cost of living, and winter has not started.
Miller makes no claim that every barrel of lost output was blown up by a Houthi missile, and he is careful to say so. Some of the decline reflects shipping, security and commercial decisions. But the point is that it doesn’t matter to a trucker in Lyon or a farmer in Lombardy whether a barrel was lost to a missile, a closed sea lane or a refinery that has no power. It is gone either way.
So when Aramco says its system is intact, ask what the production figures, the export figures and the fuel stocks say. They say Saudi Arabia is producing a quarter less oil than it did in February, exporting half as much diesel, and drawing down its reserves to keep the lights on. Any new American or Israeli campaign against Iran will land on a Saudi energy system that has no slack left to absorb it.
French borrowing costs continued to rise on Thursday, as investors fret that France’s government is struggling to pass a federal budget after public protests gripped the country.
France’s bond market was hit with another bout of selling, with the difference between French and German 10-year borrowing costs – a metric for the risk premium attached to French debt – rising to its highest level in almost 15 years.
Iraq shut the strategic Sheeb border crossing with Iran on 21 October, sources told western media outlets, framing the move as a result of intensified US pressure on Baghdad to strangle the Islamic Republic.
An Iraqi source told AFP that the crossing was shut “until further notice.” Two other sources said Washington is pressuring Baghdad to close more border crossings.
Iranian judiciary-linked website Mizan reported that the shutting of the crossing came “following a decision by the Iraqi prime minister’s office.”
According to other sources, the US wants Iraq to close all its border crossings with Iran.
“The US Treasury Department raised this with Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi when he was in New York. All border crossings will be closed except for one crossing in federal territory and one crossing in the Kurdistan region. The US has asked all countries bordering Iran to do the same.”
Disruptions have also taken place on the border with Pakistan.
“Regarding Pakistan, yes, there have been disruptions to border exchanges with some neighboring countries,” Iranian Interior Ministry spokesperson Ali Zeinivand said on 21 October.
Reuters also reported on the closure of the Sheeb crossing.
The closure took place “to review security and install detection equipment to stop the smuggling of prohibited materials,” the British outlet cites an Iraqi border official as saying.
Sheeb will be closed to passengers, vehicles and commercial trucks “until further notice,” the source added.
Valiollah Hayati, a security official from Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan, confirmed the closure and said consultations to resume operations were ongoing. Tehran has said Iraq failed to provide any formal notice prior to the sudden closure of the Sheeb crossing.
Separately, the UAE-based Al-Ain outlet reported, citing Iraqi government sources, that Iraq’s premier informed leaders of the Shia-led Coordination Framework, during a 19 October meeting, that Washington had demanded the closures.
“The US is pressuring Baghdad to close its border crossings with Iran,” an Iraqi source said.
Al-Ain further reported that Zaidi has stressed Iraq’s need to maintain a balanced position, adding that Baghdad rejected the US call for all crossings to be closed.
Washington then “proposed keeping only two crossings open, one in the north and the other in the central region – the Mehran crossing, which connects Iraq’s Wasit province with Iran’s Ilam province,” the Emirati report went on to say.
Baghdad reportedly rejected this as well, the outlet states, adding that US envoy Tom Barrack told the Iraqi prime minister that “this step falls within the policy of economic pressure on Iran.”
Zaidi was reportedly informed that the US will resume its war on Iran. “Iraq cannot become involved in this war, and its repercussions will affect the political system and the state,” the Iraqi source told Al-Ain.
The report states more crossings could be closed in the coming days.
The latest closure follows Iraq’s temporary shutdown of the Shalamcheh crossing in September, after Saudi Arabia alleged that drones launched from Iraqi territory targeted the kingdom.
It also coincides with US-imposed restrictions on Iranian flights to Iraqi airports.
Washington and Israel are talking again about “finishing the job” in Iran. Before they do, someone should take a hard look at the bill for the jobs already done. My friend Karl Miller, who has called this region correctly more often than most of the people paid to do it, sent me his latest assessment on Monday. His conclusion is blunt: on the current course, another round of escalation is coming, and the countries paying for it will be the ones that never got a vote.
The Gulf is being bled dry
Start with the people who are supposed to be America’s partners. The IMF’s October outlook reads like a casualty report. Kuwait’s economy is forecast to shrink 16.7 percent this year. Qatar’s will shrink 15.6 percent, and Bahrain’s 11.3 percent. The UAE, long sold as the region’s safe haven, is now expected to contract 3.9 percent, a seven-point swing from the IMF’s April forecast. Saudi Arabia is forecast to shrink 3.3 percent. The only Gulf economy still growing is Oman, and that is because its ports sit outside the Strait of Hormuz.
These are not paper losses. Qatar lost two LNG trains at Ras Laffan in March, about 17 percent of its export capacity. QatarEnergy says the repairs will take three to five years and will cost it roughly $20 billion a year in revenue. Saudi Arabia’s escape route around Hormuz, the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu, is crippled. My sources tell me four of its 11 pumping stations are severely damaged and out of service. Riyadh now projects a deficit of 4.9 percent of GDP, is borrowing to cover it, and has frozen non-essential spending.
Miller explains why this is worse than the headline oil price suggests. A damaged plant produces nothing to sell, but the payroll, the debt payments and the repair bills keep coming. A plant that is still standing but cannot get parts in or cargo out is in almost the same position. A $108 barrel of oil is worth nothing if you cannot ship it. And the cash the Gulf states used to invest at home and abroad is vanishing fast. If a government takes in 100 and must spend 70, it has 30 left over. Cut income to 80 and that cushion drops to 10. A 20 percent hit to revenue wipes out two-thirds of the money for everything else.
The Gulf states bought American protection to safeguard exactly this wealth. Instead, as Miller puts it, they have ended up paying for the costs of American strategy. That is a bargain they will not keep making forever.
A new round means a deeper shortage
Now consider what another round of American and Israeli strikes would do to a world that is already short of energy. Oil flows through Hormuz are running around 11.6 to 11.9 million barrels a day, against a pre-war level of about 17 million. Middle Eastern fuel exports are below half of what they were before the war. The International Energy Agency says diesel will stay tight well into 2027, and that the diesel stocks already burned will not be rebuilt before the second half of that year. Brent is around $108, up more than 75 percent from a year ago.
Every escalation so far has followed the same pattern. Iran answers by tightening its grip on Hormuz. Its allies in Yemen widen their target list. Gulf facilities that were patched together get hit again before they earn back the cost of repairing them. That is the cruelest part of Miller’s analysis: repeated attacks make repairs pointless, because nobody will spend billions restoring a plant that may be destroyed again next month. A new campaign will not reopen the Strait. It will close it further, take more Gulf capacity offline, and push diesel back toward September’s record of more than $200 a barrel, just as Europe heads into winter. France and Italy are already rioting over the cost of living. Imagine them in February.
Israel’s dark future
Miller’s harshest judgment is reserved for Israel, and it deserves a full hearing. He believes Israel will never recover from what it has done in Gaza, which a UN commission of inquiry concluded last year was genocide. In his words, the state is “done economically. It is done politically. It is done morally.” That is strong language, but the argument behind it is not hysteria. It is about how a state wears itself out.
His reasoning runs like this. Israel’s leadership has bet everything on military domination: hit every opponent hard enough that no one dares resist. Force can win battles, but it cannot make anyone accept the result. Every campaign therefore creates the need for the next one. Opponents rebuild, resentment grows, and the circle of countries willing to stand with Israel gets smaller. So the government doubles down with more force, because the alternative, accepting real limits on occupation and on its treatment of the Palestinians, threatens the political project it is defending. War becomes a way to postpone the reckoning, not avoid it.
The cost is already showing. The IMF says Israel’s economy is about 9 percent smaller than it would have been without the war. The budget deficit is heading to 6.2 percent of GDP, and public debt is on track to reach about 74 percent of GDP by 2031. Reservists are pulled from their jobs again and again. Israelis are already fighting over who carries the burden, with ultra-Orthodox men still far less likely to work or serve than everyone else. Foreign investors and partners grow more cautious with each campaign. Miller’s warning is that Israel’s project could become unsustainable long before its military power runs out. A country can keep its tanks and jets and still lose the economy, the alliances and the legitimacy it needs to survive. That is the dark and uncertain future he sees, and I find it hard to argue with.
Trump says Russia is doing nothing. Lavrov says otherwise.
Which brings me to the President’s latest reassurance. On October 13, Donald Trump said he does not believe either Russia or China is helping Iran. On Sunday he went further on social media, insisting that “Russia is doing very little to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared with what it could be doing,” if it is doing anything at all, and that he wants it to stay that way “unless some stupid people get in the way.”
Less than a day later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stood next to Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Tehran and said the opposite. “I am confident that Iran’s cause, like Russia’s, is a just cause,” Lavrov declared. He said Russia “has no intention of abandoning the implementation of agreements with Iran in the economic and investment spheres,” and recommitted Moscow to the 20-year strategic partnership that formally took effect on October 2. He announced that Russian specialists will return to the Bushehr nuclear plant. He called for Hormuz to return to pre-war conditions, and tied that to protecting Iran from renewed attacks. Before landing in Tehran, he called Trump’s approach “wrong.”
To be fair to the President, Russia has not gone to war for Iran, and the partnership treaty does not require it to. There is no mutual-defense clause. But that is a lawyer’s distinction. Russia’s foreign minister does not fly into a capital under threat of attack to call its cause just by accident. Add the reported Russian satellite data reaching Iran’s allies and the steady improvement in the accuracy of Iranian and Houthi missiles, and the picture is of a partner that is careful, deniable and very much engaged. Moscow does not need to fire a shot. It only needs to keep Iran standing while America bleeds its Gulf allies and Europe’s economy.
The bill comes due
If Washington and Israel launch another round, they will be betting that this time force produces a settlement. Three years of evidence says it will not. What it will produce is deeper Gulf recessions, a longer energy shortage, more anger in Europe’s streets, and a bigger bill for an Israel that is already running out of room. Miller’s forecast is that the next round is coming anyway. I hope he is wrong this time. I doubt it.
These yachts are highly popular with the ‘super-bourgeoisie’ – and getting bigger. Can anything be done to stop them destroying our seas?
Who knew? Apparently everyone did, apart from me: you don’t wear shoes on a superyacht. Now, about to step on to my first teak deck at the Monaco Yacht Show, I’ve got to take my trainers off, and I’m having a sock panic. Have they got holes? Do they even match? Do they smell?
To be honest, I’ve come dressed all wrong for Europe’s big annual superyacht trade exhibition. The code for men seems to be crisp and tucked in, blazers and chinos, navy and white, sculpted hair and designer sunnies. (I went colourful, loose, casual). For women, it’s something like Riviera elegance. Everyone – whether they’re Italian, French, English, German, American, exhibitors, buyers, brokers, charterers – seems to know each other. The international superyacht community seems to be a close-knit one, and I’m not part of it. Yet.
France’s fuel shortages persisted Monday, with roughly 14 percent of the country’s service stations reporting at least one product out of stock and hundreds completely dry, as diesel prices hovered near multi-year highs and President Emmanuel Macron began a Gulf tour aimed at securing additional supplies.
Official data from the Economy Ministry showed 14 percent of stations nationwide facing shortages of diesel or gasoline as of 9 a.m. Monday, up from 10 percent on Saturday.
Independent trackers drawing on the same government feed reported more than 1,600 stations with at least one temporary shortage and several hundred that had run completely out of the fuels they normally sell. Diesel was among the products affected, with median prices around €2.35–€2.36 per liter.
The disruptions have been most acute at TotalEnergies stations, which have capped prices at €1.99 per liter for gasoline and €2.25 for diesel since July.
More than half of the company’s roughly 2,300 sites have reported shortages in recent days, according to data analyses, as drivers seek the cheapest fuel and inventories run low. Regions including the Grand Est, Île-de-France and Normandy have been among the hardest hit.
The shortages are rooted in global market tightness linked to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz amid conflict involving Iran, which has constrained refined product flows, particularly diesel. However, Ukraine’s ongoing strikes against Russian refineries have also played a key role.
France and other G7 members agreed earlier this month, under French chairmanship and with International Energy Agency coordination, to release up to 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel stocks. France is drawing down 10 million barrels of its own diesel reserves over three months, with the government estimating the move could cut pump prices by 12 to 18 cents per liter starting around Nov. 1.
TotalEnergies has separately pledged reductions of roughly 8 to 12 cents at its stations over the same period.
Macron arrived in Kuwait on Monday for a three-day tour that also includes the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar. The Élysée said the goal is to secure additional diesel and oil volumes and explore alternative shipping routes, with senior executives from TotalEnergies and Engie accompanying him.
A presidential adviser said that the aim is “additional volumes and more supplies for the French people, which will indirectly have an effect on prices.” Macron has linked the price surge to the Hormuz disruptions and maintained the trip despite the weekend’s violent cost-of-living protests, during which fuel prices were among the grievances cited by demonstrators.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said the reserve release should begin easing prices from Nov. 1 and that electricity bills will not rise this winter. Opposition figures have called the plan insufficient or a “scam,” arguing it does little to address longer-term vulnerabilities or the immediate empty pumps. The government has maintained that strategic stocks remain adequate and that the main issue has been logistics and distribution under high demand.
Drivers across multiple regions reported long searches for open pumps over the weekend, with some stations posting “out of stock” signs for diesel. The combination of high fuel prices and shortages has added to broader cost-of-living pressures that [have fueled] large demonstrations and mass riots on Oct. 17, which turned violent in several cities.
With little more than two weeks to go until the midterm elections, it seems increasingly possible that the Democrats, already a big favorite to win control of the House of Representatives, will also take charge of the planet's most elite nursing home, the United States Senate, where the median age is 64 years old. RealClearPolitics' poll aggregator has moved control of "the world's greatest deliberative body" (as its members are grandiosely wont to call it) to "toss up," status and prediction markets are now breaking big toward a blue wave. As of this writing, Kalshi has its Senate odds at 63 percent for the Dems vs. 37 percent for the GOP; Polymarket is at 62 percent vs. 39 percent.
As gratifying as it might be to see unprincipled Trump enablers reduced to minority status after signing off on economy-wrecking tariffs, inhumane immigration detentions, and wars of choice, there's at least one good reason to dread a Democratic majority too: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive who is spending the run-up to the midterms freaking out over possible consolidation in the condiments business and accusing private equity firms of gutting such shopping-mall favorites as Claire's and Toys R Us. There's every reason to believe that a Senate run by Warren and other economic interventionists will waste time, money, and resources trying to prevent a world in which, per the X wag Iowahawkblog, "a panopticon conglomerate owns two brands of hot sauce."
On October 13, Warren posted this dire warning to X:
Hellmann's mayo McCormick spices Cholula hot sauce Frank's RedHot
What do these products have in common? One company could soon control them all.
I have concerns that McCormick and Unilever's $45 billion merger could increase YOUR grocery prices.
It's hard to think of a more competitive and varied market than the one for hot sauces, which is expected to more than double over the next decade. The barriers to entry are generally low, as are the key ingredients, and new entrants can easily market and sell online, avoiding the costs of buying shelf space in conventional supermarkets. Yet Warren is urging regulators at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to halt mergers of both product makers like McCormick and Unilever and grocery stores like Kroger and Giant Eagle.
The latter complaint is particularly picayune. Kroger is one of the country's largest supermarket chains, operating around 2,800 stores under its own name as well as Harris Teeter, Ralph's, and others. Giant Eagle operates about 170 stores. This merger is no more the stuff of nightmares than a single company producing both Cholula and Frank's RedHot. If Warren gains more clout from being in the majority, expect her to butt in more and more on such mergers.
Making it harder for businesses to adapt is not a recipe for making goods and services more affordable. But Warren is keen to blame economic creative destruction not on "new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates" (as Joseph Schumpeter would have it), but on pure greed. In a TikTok released earlier this month, she shows a poster board with corporate logos from once-thriving companies that she says have been "gutted" by "private equity" firms.
"Here's your local mall," she piously intones. "Now, private equity wants you to believe that Red Lobster went bankrupt because of their endless shrimp….They want you to believe that Claire's went bankrupt because teens stopped shopping at the mall." In Warren's telling, private equity firms magically take over thriving businesses and then strip them bare. The typical pattern is that private equity enters the picture after a business is failing.
Virtually all accounts of the decline of, for example, Red Lobster, note that the chain had been spiraling for several reasons before the private equity firm Golden Gate Capital got involved in 2014. As this CNN article notes, the chain, which started in 1968, had seen drops in sales as customer desires changed. Management compounded the difficulties with a series of bad decisions, including continuing various all-you-can-eat menu specials, before coming out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year.
Similarly, it's true that some teens still go to malls and get their ears pierced at Claire's. But anyone who has spent time in retail America over the past few decades knows that malls are no longer the destination that they once were. As CapitalOne Shopping Research documents, "in 1986, there were 25,000 malls, large and small, nationwide." By 2023, that number had shrunk to just 1,200. While some malls are coming back, most are not, and for reasons that have nothing to do with private equity. Online retails plays a role (though a smaller one than usually imagined, with e-commerce accounting for less than 20 percent of all retail sales). But mostly, it's that people today tend to want a different sort of retail environment. Anchor stores—think Macy's and J.C. Penney—are shadows of themselves, and younger people have less unstructured time in which to prowl food courts and arcades.
For politicians like Elizabeth Warren, though, there can be no financial gains or losses that aren't the result of shadowy, conspiratorial forces. If her party takes control of the Senate, her words will carry more weight. But it will be American consumers that ultimately shoulder the burden of an even-more-regulated economy. The market for hot sauces will almost certainly stay spicy, but many other parts will surely suffer.
Four years after Washington set out to cripple Russia’s energy economy, America’s war with Iran has forced it to seek relief from the very country it tried to isolate, encircle, and defeat. The Sanctions Strategy Meets Its Limits On October 9, US President Donald Trump announced an extraordinary agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin: Moscow […]
Login
