From NIPA accounts:
Figure 1: Petroleum and petroleum product exports (blue), imports (red), both in bn.$, SAAR. Source: BEA.
For the balance in physical units of crude oil, here’s data from EIA:
Source: EIA.
Note EIA has data through May.
Memo to Bruce Hall: For Pete’s sake, figure out how to use FRED and EIA databases.
Bruce relies on Natalia Harp for his economic data
Off topic – I suppose everyone is aware of the hit piece on Social Security just published by the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget?:
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/social-security-retirees-receive-far-more-they-paid
Here’s the problem. The Center has not presented an objective look at fresh data, but instead rehashed data from a year-old report from the CBO, and then told us how we should think about that report. Here’s the report:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61492
The main idea the CRFB is peddling is that just because the Federal government collected FICA taxes from people’s wages for their entire career in return for a promise of benefits is no reason to keep that promise. If the numbers don’t work out, the right solution is to break the promise to workers. All other solutions, says CRFB, are the result of the “weaponization” of “myths”.
Retirees have made financial decisions throughout their working lives predicated on a promised level of retirement benefits. Late in life, it’s tough to make up for broken promises, especially if one has not been fortunate enough to earn well while working. The idea behind Social Security from its inception is to provide a measure of financial security. Security requires predictably. This is not just some math problem.
The CRFB also ignores much of what has happened in the economy to undermine the finances of the Social Security Trust Fund. W2 earnings are taxed, up to the cap. That means any slowing of wage growth below the cap reduces FICA revenue. Over the years, the inflation-adjusted level of the federal minimum wage has fallen dramatically – that is purely a policy decision, made by Congress, and it has reduced FICA revenue. Incomes above the cap have, for most of the past 30 years, risen faster than incomes below the cap. That is not a single policy decision, but the cumulative effect of many policy decisions. Together, those decisions have reduced FICA revenue. Demographics? Sure, but demographics have never been a mystery. The insidious element, because policymakers never admit to it, is the contant pressure to keep wages down. Pile tax cuts for the rich, funded by ever-increasing deficits, on top of policies to limit wages, and we end up where we are today – “Where, oh where, shall we ever find the money to keep our promises to workers?”
So now, the median wage earner retires after a career of earning less than would have been the case under a different set of policies, and CRFB says let’s have another policy change that harms workers in retirement just like union busting and trade policy and tax policy and education policy and lax anti-trust enforcement have harmed them during their working years.
Sure, it’s just one more hit-job from one more bought-and-paid-for “think tank”, so what’s new, right? But that’s how they get the ball rolling. The “report” gets quoted in the press as if it’s objective and fair. Talking heads discuss it in the same tones they use to talk about real facts, even though it’s just spin on a year-old CBO document. No objectivity required. And, oh, by the way, the CRFB piece isn’t signed. ‘Cause when you’re doing high quality work like that…
It’s actually great that they are beginning to talk about it before the election. Some congress critters are even talking about having a “Commission” look at it and let them decide. Sure commission of theft from regular folks.
Just start taxing all incomes up to the (much higher) limit. Trust fund babies, capital gains -everything. Demanding that the rich pay their fair share is all it takes to fix most of our problems. That is a message the voters are ready to hear and act upon.
Bruce is using Fox News and right wing websites – and he is even struggling with that.
Interesting item from National Association of Home Builders #Housing starts plunged 12.4% in July to an annual pace of 1.239 million, 13.5% lower than a year ago. Single-family home starts fell 9.9% to an annual rate of 808,000, 15.7% lower than a year ago. Home building permits, however, grew 5% last month. #realestate
That 5.7% y/y decline in single-family starts is especially worrisome – Housing is an enormous interest-sensitive part of the economy. A sustained decline hits: High mortgage rates → weaker home demand → weaker builder margins → fewer starts → less residential investment → weaker GDP → weaker employment. And it doesn’t stop with builders. It propagates through: lumber; appliances; HVAC; plumbing and electrical equipment. The Trump S – Slower growth H – high interest rates I – inflation and restrictive immigration and T – Terrible Trade Policy and Tariffs – economy
Hey, if you were wondering about Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario, you might keep in mind Trump’s last renaming of the Gulf of Mexico in 2025.
The MAGA oligarch sycophants at Apple and Google dutifully renamed it the Gulf of America on their maps. You can see it yourself if you pull up a map of Florida on either platform. The only one who didn’t was Mapquest, who satirically ridiculed Trump’s demand, making a web app allowing users to generate their own “Gulf of Whatever” map.
It will be interesting to see how quickly Apple and Google bend the knee on Lake Ontario to keep in the good graces of their Dear Leader. We need to put an end to these evil oligarchs.
By the way did you notice that they arrested a guy who drove into DC with a guillotine in the back of his pickup truck this week? All he did was park his truck on the street. Remember Trump’s MAGA fans constructed a gallows with a noose in front of the US Capitol on January 6. It was erected at 6 AM, before Trump’s rally, and allowed to stand all day on the Capitol grounds while they chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” Trump was fine with that.
I used to use Mapquest a lot but they got less user-friendly and more buggy so I stopped. It sound like I need to seriously look into a change. One thing I really hate about Apple & Google is their failure to show you road services unless the owners have paid bribes. A honest and accurate service would be great.
I wonder if Trump’s advisers, the same ones who neglected to inform him about the Strait of Hormuz, informed him about a little thing called “Niagara Falls” on the St. Lawrence Seaway. The only way American ships can get from ports on the Atlantic to Great Lake ports like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago is through the Welland Canal which lies entirely inside Canada.
Trump while campaigning in 2024 : “We’re buying tar from Venezuela and we’re refining it in Houston. It’s the dirtiest, worst oil anywhere in the world. And we’re refining it – so you can imagine what’s going up in the air.”
Today: “Best oil deal ever!”
Trump just says whatever he thinks appropriate for the audience he is facing, even if it totally contradicts what he said before — and the press just says “whatever” and let’s him get away with it.
And Trump today says: “One of the things I’m going to do with Venezuelan oil is fill up the strategic oil reserve, because because of the Sleepy Joe Biden, the previous president, it was actually empty.”
The SPR was 400 million barrels at the end of Biden’s term, not “actually empty”, and since then Trump has drained the SPR by over 100 million barrels to its lowest level since 1983. The press just ignores this blatant lie.
And he’s going to fill it with “Venezuelan tar, the dirtiest, worst oil anywhere in the world”, as Trump said in 2024. That is logistically impossible – you can’t pump Venezuelan oil into the SPR caverns without permanently wrecking them.
Trump: “It is a gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States. Thank you!” A “gift” at the point of a gun.
ncorrys.com/energy/oil-supply/international-oil-supply/full-cycle-cost-of-venezuelan-oil
In addition to what you said, it turns out that the cost of extracting oil from Venezuela can be $56 a barrel. Excuse me but that is not a recipe for gasoline falling to $2 a gallon.
What is the “so what” from these charts? Maybe there has been ongoing discussion, but just looking at these charts and this post, not sure what the point is. [not even debating that point…just what is it]
Also, why is the first chart (I guess) US total imports and exports (in dollars) and the bottom one just Canada net imports only (in volume). Feels like top of an apple and bottom of an orange. (Perhaps related to the unstated point?)
I think the overall point (from this and multiple previous postings) is that we are importing a lot of things from Canada that we neither can do without nor want to smack a huge % tariff (price increase) on. It was previously mentioned that if you include services, the trade balance is in our favor. So when it comes to a full blown tit-for-tat trade war against Canada – Trump doesn’t have the cards. In the end it will be like our war with Iran. Going in without knowing much and losing exactly because of that. Like Iran Canada has a very good idea of where it would hurt and what to do about it. Trump probably think he can replace the Canadian crude with the stuff from Venezuela. But it will be several years before that even begins to drip-drop across the Gulf of Mexico. I am not even sure the US governments sinking $100 billion into the lost cause of Venezuelan oil can make us any less dependent on Canada.
So…it’s an Orange Man thing. Haven’t been keeping track of him. Is he going through his monthly cycle about now?
Also on the petroleum/products, I sort of wonder (not a criticism, just checking) if that includes natural gas or not?