NAFTA 2.0

While the left in Congress used McCarthy like tactics to destroy a man and his family and ignore the right of privacy to an emotionally scarred women, the Trump Administration continues to make strides to improve the lives of the average American worker. In a  major breakthrough, the U.S. and Canada agreed to rewrite NAFTA that was unfairly stealing jobs from America and making our farmers and businesses less competitive.

NAFTA 2.0 will now be officially called the “U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement” or USMCA and will make significant changes to the rulebook that has governed continental commerce since 1994. According to the Wall Street Journal, the biggest impact is expected to be on the region’s largest industry, autos, requiring a greater portion of vehicles to be made in North America and with high-wage labor in the U.S. and Canada, according to the WSJ.

This is a big win for U.S. labor unions that have complained that the government was not doing enough to protect American Workers. This move by Trump is the most pro UNION deal made in generations and the Democrats that have just assumed votes from Labor may want to spend more time focusing on them than using the same tactics used in the Salem Witch Trials that by a mere accusation you can be burned at the stake. In the Meantime, U.S. Union Wages will start to rise and the resurgence in the U.S. manufacturing industry will continue to flourish.

U.S. dairy farmers, that have long complained that Canada was not treating them fairly, also received some help from the deal. The WSJ writes that “One of Canada’s last-minute concessions made to finalize the broader agreement was a pledge to curb protection for its dairy industry, a policy Mr. Trump has frequently criticized as unfairly restricting American exports.”

So, while the narrative that the Democrats are for the American Worker and that Trump only cares for the rich was destroyed once again as Trump continues to modernize our economy and lead the world towards free and honest trade. The Democrats, in turn, are spending their time looking in the gutter trying to dig up dirt, so they can remain in power, raise your taxes, and keep the wealth for themselves. They want to put more burden on business, so they can go back to a time when more Americans depend on them for their daily bread.

They don’t want to see what we are seeing. They do not want to see historic low unemployment, they do not want to see more people getting off food stamps and government help, because if you become independent you won’t need them. They need you to be dependent. They do not want your business to do well and if it does, they want to tax it because, you didn’t build it, they did. So if they built, it, they can take it away from you or at least tax and regulate it to death so they can suck the living breath out of it.     

The deal is also bullish for oil as the consummation of trade should start creating jobs, growth and in turn more oil demand. Oil prices are holding gains even as President Trump made a call to the Saudi Arabian King. Reuters reports that U.S. President Donald Trump called Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Saturday and they discussed efforts being made to maintain supplies to ensure oil market stability and global economic growth, Saudi state news agency SPA reported. Yet it is unclear that the Saudi can do much. Refiners are not screaming for Saudi Grades of crude.

Bottom-line, the oil markets are staying strong as the oil market will be undersupplied going into winter. Conventional supplies of oil are drying up and shale oil process can’t keep pace with increasing conventional and non-conventional oil production rates.

Reuters is also reporting that ”High-sulfur fuel oil (HSFO), essentially the leftovers of an oil refiner’s output, will still flow from refineries around the world even after new rules startup in 2020 curtailing its use in the global shipping fleet, a Reuters survey showed. Sixty percent of the 33 refineries contacted by Reuters in a global survey will still produce HSFO in 2020, although the supply will tighten as 70 percent of these refiners plan to reduce their output. Starting that year, ships will have to use marine fuel, which primarily consists of residual fuel oil, with a maximum sulfur content of 0.5 percent under International Maritime Organization (IMO) rules to reduce air pollution. Currently, the global shipping fleet, which includes oil and chemical tankers as well as container ships, uses as much as 3.3 million barrels per day of HSFO with a maximum of 3.5 percent sulfur.”

Refiners will have little incentive to produce HSFO after the regulations, though some demand will remain as a small but growing number of vessels are fitted with smokestack scrubbers that remove the sulfur from the exhaust fumes and power plants will continue to consume the fuel. “Although HSFO demand for ships is expected to decline substantially in 2020, the oil’s demand for power generation and general users will remain,” Japan’s second-largest refiner Idemitsu Kosan (5019.T) told Reuters in the survey.