📢 🇺🇸 🗳 Trump says Democrats will impeach him, and they don't know why, if the GOP loses the midterms.

📎 Disclosetv

🚜 Farmers are selling their pre-purchased fertilizer at double what they paid instead of planting a crop.

Let that sink in. It is more profitable to sit out the season and flip your input costs than to put seed in the ground.

Soybean farmers lost $100 an acre last year. Corn farmers are looking at $50 to $100 losses this year. So what is the response? Switch from corn to soybeans.

Soybeans make their own nitrogen. They do not need the fertilizer corn demands.

The problem is we are already oversupplied on soybeans. More soybeans on a flooded market just drives prices lower.

Fertilizer prices have gone through the roof. The Strait of Hormuz disruptions made it worse. Farmers who locked in fertilizer early are reselling it instead of using it.

That is how broken the commodity food system has become.

🔗 AcmeAcres.us (@idahobeef)

🇪🇺🇺🇸 EU slips further behind US in race for critical minerals

Washington and Beijing are beating Brussels in competition to secure components used in defence and green technologies

The EU risks falling further behind the US in the race to secure critical minerals, as the west seeks to counter Chinese dominance in essential components for defence and green technology, European officials and industry have warned.

The US has invested heavily in the past two years to ensure it has access to rare earth metals and other materials used in strategic technologies, especially those for which China dominates global production.

Washington has announced about $40bn in provisional funding for mineral projects since 2022, and taken equity stakes in a range of domestic miners. The US government has also lobbied in favour of American companies winning tenders for mines in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya.

In the past 18 months, Brussels has chosen dozens of strategic projects to benefit from faster permitting rules. The EU and member states have committed about €6bn to minerals projects this year, but the industry warns it is moving too slowly to kick-start the sector.

‘‘I really admire the Americans because they take an idea and they run with it, while we Europeans hesitate, over-administrate, talk and lose time,’’ said Bernd Schäfer, chief executive of EIT RawMaterials, a group representing the EU critical minerals industry

Meanwhile, the US is also seeking to build a coalition of countries that could work together to build supply chains that bypass China via a Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (Forge).

But, given the US administration’s antagonistic approach to the EU under Donald Trump, the move is raising scepticism in Brussels.

The EU “cannot be fooled by negotiations” with the US, one official said. “We need to do what the US is doing by buying offtake, moving at speed, and using financial tools” to build out the supply chain of critical minerals, ahead of a new strategy to be outlined this autumn.

“We are looking at how to work more with like-minded partners — Canada and Japan,” the official added, while not ruling out further work with the US.

The US under Trump was “erratic and unpredictable across the whole spectrum. You cannot just expect it’s all going to be OK,” said one former official in reference to the Forge initiative.

🔗 https://archive.ph/QCbwk

🇺🇸 30-Year Treasury Yield closes the week at 5.27%, the highest weekly close since June 2007

🔗 BarChart

🇨🇳🇺🇸 Chinese Yuan hits strongest level against the U.S. Dollar since January 2023

🔗 BarChart

🛢 On August 20th, only 3 tankers crossed out from the Strait of Hormuz on the Oman route. Only one VLCC. Nowhere near Barak Ravid's 10 million barrels/day.

We can see 2 vessels that were previously hit by Iran, derelict and drifting in the waters of the Hormuz after they've been abandoned by their crews.

🔗 MerruX