The United States Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports is working to perfection, and is basically stopping Iran from selling any oil or getting any money. Losing $400 or $500 million a day means you’re in a business that has no future. You won’t meet payroll. No retirement accounts. No health benefits either. And your employees and their families and friends are getting very, very angry. They didn’t sign on to this insane radical Islamism, which is leading to the destruction of their country. Just think about this, it’s how revolutions begin.
And besides President Trump’s steel backbone in maintaining the blockade, hats off to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for his own maximum pressure campaign through Economic Fury. My sources tell me the Treasury has been freezing all those Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps offshore bank accounts in places like Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. These are the generals who have looted and stolen from Iran for decades and decades so they and their kids can live the high life outside of Iran. It’s what dictators and totalitarians always do. Yet many, if not most, of these Iranian offshore bank accounts have been frozen by Mr. Bessent.
So no dollars are available to Iran. Very important: no dollars are getting into Iran. This is the banking freeze. It’s also the export-import freeze. And sources tell me the secretary is poised to sanction any country that facilitates any trade or finance flows on behalf of Iran. If they do, they will be thrown out of the American economic system. Knocked off the Swift accounting ledger and the New York Fed’s transactions wire. So hats off to Mr. Bessent for keeping the financial heat on as part of the war effort.
Now, as bad as it’s gotten in Iran, the other side of the coin is that Trump-Bessent economic policies are keeping the American economy in pretty good shape. Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline has not stopped significant consumer spending. Manufacturing has come alive. Take a look at the ISMs and the S&P Global PMIs. Private sector employment has beaten all expectations. The unemployment rate is at a low 4.3 percent.
Looking through the temporary energy price spike, the inflation rate is probably close to 2.5 percent, and you can bet Kevin Warsh will bring it lower when he takes over. Weekly and monthly unemployment claims remain rock bottom. And profits, which are the mother’s milk of stocks and the lifeblood of the economy, are booming.
Productivity is high. Unit labor costs are low. And business is making good money in order to expand, build new factories, and pay overtime and tips without taxes. And stock markets are at or near record highs across the board. America is a great free-market capitalist economic machine, backed up by a president who believes in rewarding success, not punishing it. And pushes for free and fair trade.
Finally, another reason for America’s economic success during wartime is simple: we have oil. Plenty of it. Mr. Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” over the past decade was sheer genius. We don’t need their oil, we have our own oil. And virtually the rest of the world is coming to us because they need fuel and we are reliable suppliers. Just think of it.
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