The PPI is the Producer Price Index.  The CPI is the Consumer Price Index.  The PPI reflects the price product producers are getting for their goods and services.  The CPI reflects the price consumers are paying for their goods and services.  They generally run together as lower production prices usually mean lower consumer prices.
Here again today, the fed is perplexed.  With a growing economy, and with labor market tightening, the people who control the monetary policy have continued to anticipate inflation, rises in the PPI and CPI.  However, as we have outlined, it’s not happening.
It’s a little wonky, but basically prices are NOT going up.  The Fed is perplexed.  We predicted this:

[…] The Labor Department said its producer price index for final demand slipped 0.1 percent last month, weighed by decreasing costs for services. That was the largest decline since August 2016 and reversed June’s 0.1 percent gain.
In the 12 months through July, the PPI increased 1.9 percent after rising 2.0 percent in the year through June. Economists had forecast the PPI to tick up 0.1 percent last month and 2.2 percent from a year ago. (read more)

Neither the PPI nor the CPI measure changes in food or energy costs.  Those high consumption sectors have always been removed from Fed measures.
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Today Secretary of State Rex Tillerson highlighted events over the past six months.  T-Rex takes another stroll around the globe discussing regional policy, specific state policy, and ongoing challenges.  Secretary Tillerson then takes questions from the media at the conclusion of his remarks.
Very informative. Very well worth watching (T-Rex Begins at 03:40):

Well, the headline attention on Venezuela’s collapsing democracy provides the tripwire trigger to go deeper into the South America crisis and how it is not rising up organically without geopolitical and ideological connection.  Always remember, in the battle for U.S. sovereignty, there are multiple facets connected to larger and more consequential issues.

Washington – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro Moros, pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13692, which authorizes sanctions against current or former officials of the Government of Venezuela and others undermining democracy in Venezuela. (more)

♦Venezuela’s democracy is collapsing. ♦Argentina and other South American nations have been engaged by the Trump administration for over six months. ♦President Trump signed pro-active executive orders. ♦Mexico’s economy and political apparatus is infected with corruption. ♦NAFTA is on the cusp of renegotiation. ♦Candidate, now President Trump, proposed a Southern security “Wall”. ♦Believe me, these things are not disconnected, and they are not NEW concerns.

To really absorb some of these geopolitical issues we must analyze specific 2014 events through the reality of prior, more consequential, events.  We must look into the way-back machine. To that end we have read the entirety of:
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Finally today we see a significant loss for the “Big Club”. Speaker Paul Ryan, the GOPe professional business class, Wall Street and the U.S. CoC accept the Border Adjustment Tax is not going to be a part of any larger tax reform agenda under the Trump administration.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and President Trump win the policy argument with the removal of the B.A.T.
In a joint statement outlining the forward plans for tax reform the “Big Six” tax negotiators (Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady), announce the consumer punishing BAT will not be included.

[…] “While we have debated the pro-growth benefits of border adjustability, we appreciate that there are many unknowns associated with it and have decided to set this policy aside in order to advance tax reform.” (more)

The B.A.T was to revenue collection on imported products and impact on consumers – what the Obamacare mandate was to revenue collection on healthcare and impact on consumers.
The B.A.T  was simply a scheme to embed the cost of renegotiated trade import tariffs, directly onto the consumer, isolated away from any responsibility on the corporation to reduce their own internal efficiencies as a method to keep the price down. It was a dubious and manipulative effort.
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Earlier today USTR Robert Lighthizer released President Trump’s NAFTA Objectives outline to congress and the American people.  The NAFTA renegotiations are scheduled to begin in August.
The bilateral trade negotiations with the EU (European Union), S.E.A.N. (Southeast Asian Nations), China, U.K. and all other nations will follow -individually- after the NAFTA process is complete.

It cannot be overstated how critical this is.  Please, please, understand.  There are trillions of dollars at stake.   All political opposition to President Donald Trump will increase in exponential severity as the dates of these renegotiated trade deals draws closer.  There are trillions of dollars at stake.   The entities outlined below will throw everything at the current administration in an effort to secure a better financial outcome for their interests.
Multinational Corporations, Wall Street interests and Multinational Financial stakeholders (mostly banks and foreign governments), have lobbied DC politicians for decades to create trade outcomes favorable to them.  It is, at its core, the financial and policy cancer that has distributed America’s physical and financial wealth globally. Additionally, multinational corporate media are part of this entire process and are stakeholders in the outcomes.
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President Trump delivers opening remarks to celebrate Made in The USA manufacturing week, a presidential initiative.

We figured sooner or later this was going to happen.  For three decades both Republicans and Democrats, the professional UniParty lobbyist benefactors, have sold-out America’s middle class wealth to multinational corporations and multinational banks.
All U.S. trade policy, especially the policies of Democrat politicians, have been determined by purchased interests by multinational corporations via DC lobbying expenditures.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of those multinational special interest groups. It is not even debatable that this approach has taken place for decades under the UniParty flag.

The U.S. CoC actually wrote most of the globalist TPP trade agreement verbiage; and along with dozens of multinational organizations – the U.S. CoC pays off politicians of all stripes, colors and affiliated definitions to support the global financial agenda.  ONLY TRUMP is independent enough to finally stop this economic usurpation.
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Sometimes we just sits and thinks… and sometimes we just thinks and laughs… This truly is the greatest of times to be alive and engaged.  All, because, Trump stuff.

After reminding ourselves there’s no longer an actual media apparatus (per se’) in the historic sense of assembling facts, just facts, that explain situations; we once again see a brutal example of an answer to a simple economic question ignored by media.
Yesterday, within a MAGAnomics discussion thread, the question was asked:

♦ How long do you think the Chinese economy can sustain itself? When will it run out of steam? Could you maybe add some meat to the bone of what a trade war may look like with China, in terms of what we can expect to happen?

My own reply was rather simplistic:

♦ A trade confrontation with China will remove the cloak of capitalism and show the true colors of totalitarian control behind the Chinese economic mask.  Confronting China’s Oz, economically, is simply sending in Toto (Wilbur Ross) to pull back the curtain. Easy peasy.

As if on cue… here comes Xi Jinping to deliver the audio visual demonstration. (more…)