Unusually, the eyes of the world are turned to Alaska, the Last Frontier, to find a solution to a significant frontier to peace in our time. Trump says Putin ‘wants to get it done’ at tomorrow’s Alaska summit, and he floated the idea of a second meeting with Zelenskyy. The market hit saturation of terrible TACO-based jokes as President Trump extended the China tariff deadline by 90 days, which eased fears of impacts on the oil market. The men running the US continue to argue about rates, tariffs and inflation as the pendulum seems to have swung in Powell’s favour with a shocking PPI release today. The US PPI numbers just came in way hotter than expected, which is really bad news for inflation. Since PPI usually leads CPI by a couple of months, it likely means consumer prices will jump soon as producers pass those higher costs along. Wild speculation doesn’t stop on land. As we entered August, everyone took off their tariff expert hats and donned their hurricane expert hats. Erin appears to be tracking to miss the US in current projections, but this means as much or as little as you want it to. Just as geopolitical tension could diffuse, there seems plenty of time for fearmongering in the troposphere.
