The FOMC just (unanimously) hiked rates for the first time since July 2023 despite recent inflation prints slowing…

Additionally, recent macro surprises are clearly signaling stagflation – the central banker’s nemesis…

So, a hike for credibility… but Warsh’s biggest challenge will be communicating his outlook without reverting to forward guidance, even as markets seek clarity on whether today’s likely move is one-and-done, or the start of a broader tightening cycle.

With investors forced to extract more signal from his language, the press conference carries outsized front-end risk.

In a note to clients, BMO notes two-year yields have moved an average 14bps across his five public appearances as chair so far.

The big question for today of course, assuming they do hike, is whether this is likely to be a “one and done” move.

We haven’t seen one of those this century so far.

Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank catalogues that there were a few of those in the 1980s and 1990s.

Outside of them, “the shortest cycle on record remains the four hikes of 1986-87.”

While all the talk is about the ‘unanimous’ decision today with the great majority of dots signaling at least one more hike this year… The Fed is extremely divided next year with four members see at least 2 rate-CUTS (policy error much)…

Quick reminder:

• In 2024, the Powell Fed cut 50bps 2 months before the presidential election with core CPI at 3.3%

• In 2026, the Warsh Fed hikes 25bps 2 months before the midterms with core CPI at 2.4%

Will Trump comment?

Watch the FOMC press conference live here (due to start at 1430ET):

Tl;dr: As the market expected, The Fed hiked rates by 25bps (for the first time since July 2023) despite a trend lower in CPI over the last three months.

Today’s decision was unanimous and the ‘Dots’ signal one more hike in 2026.

The Fed members increased their GDP outlooks, lowered their unemployment forecasts, but hiked their inflation outlooks…

The big question for today of course, assuming they do hike, is whether this is likely to be a “one and done” move.

Quick reminder:

• In 2024, the Powell Fed cut 50bps 2 months before the presidential election with core CPI at 3.3%

• In 2026, the Warsh Fed hikes 25bps 2 months before the midterms with core CPI at 2.4%

*  *  *

Since the last FOMC Meeting on July 29th, a lot has happened amid the supposed Summer doldrums, the dollar is lower while the anti-fiat trades (gold, bitcoin) and crude are all significantly higher with bonds the worst performers…

Stagflationary signals abound as inflation data has surprised to the upside while growth data has surprised to the downside since the last FOMC

But, the market is all-in, betting on a 25bps hike today – 95% versus 70% at the last FOMC, with a lot of noise in between. Dec odds are up from 40% to 70%. The market is pricing in 3.5 hikes into September of next year as the peak of the cycle…

So, before we get the decision, putting things in context, if Warsh were to hold rates here, it would be BY FAR the greatest surprise The Fed has ever hit the market with…

The Fed has historically always gone when market pricing is this high. That’s on top of a substantial hawkish repricing that has recently taken two-year yields to their highest since 2024 and pushed the 10-year through 5% to levels unseen since 2007.

So, what did he do?

Statement

After three dissents (in favor of a hike) in July, the Eccles Building establishment appears to have won the tug of war against The White House, with The Fed hiking rates 25bps (as fully priced in by the market)

• *FED UNANIMOUSLY RAISES BENCHMARK RATE 25 BPS TO 3.75%-4% RANGE

• *FED: RATE HIKE WILL SUPPORT `TIMELIER’ RETURN TO 2% INFLATION

Dots

In June, 9 members saw at least 1 rate-hike in 2026:

• 3 hikes – 1 (Jun)

• 2 hikes – 5 (Jun)

• 1 hike – 3 (Jun)

• No rate change – 8 (Jun)

• 1 cut – 1 (Jun)

Now in September, with 1 hike in the books, these are the number of hikes/cuts left in 2026

• 2 more hikes – 4

• 1 more hike – 12

• No rate change – 2

• No one sees rate-cuts

So the median dot suggest one more rate hike in 2026…

1 member sees four rate-cuts in 2027 and 3 see 2 cuts

• 1 hike in 2027 – 8

• No rate-change in 2027 – 6

• 2 cuts – 3

• 4 cuts – 1

Only 18 of 19 officials submitted their ‘dots’ with some suggesting Warsh himself did not contribute again.

SEP

The Fed members increased their GDP outlooks, lowered their unemployment forecasts, but hiked their inflation outlooks…

Full Redline

Key changes:

• Addition of “domestic spending has been resilient”

• Capital investment reduced from “strong” to “robust”

• Adds that “Today’s policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee’s 2 percent goal”

The big question for today of course, assuming they do hike, is whether this is likely to be a “one and done” move.

We haven’t seen one of those this century so far.

Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank catalogues that there were a few of those in the 1980s and 1990s.

Outside of them, “the shortest cycle on record remains the four hikes of 1986-87.”

In something that sounds straight from the plot of “Homeland” or the more recent CIA thriller “Lioness”, the Trump administration has charged multiple members of Russia’s intelligence services with running a “global assassination network” that targeted Kremlin critics.

The Department of Justice has newly revealed and alleged that one murder plot even took place on American soil over the summer.

The fugitives have been named but have not been apprehended, and are still at large. A murder-for-hire plot is detailed in an indictment which was unsealed Tuesday by federal prosecutors in New York.

The plot was never followed through on, but a Russian dissident is said to have been targeted, during which time a Brooklyn man was recruited by Cuban and Venezuelan individuals – both which were ultimately being run by a Russian intelligence handler – but the Brooklyn man is said to have gotten cold feet when asked to carry out an assassination.

The five defendants are all believed to live in Russia, and are part of what court documents call the “RIS Network,” including a 63-year-old former Russian intelligence colonel named Yuri Khrameev, as well as his son Kirill.

According to a summary of the wild plot and allegations:

It marks the latest alleged attempt by a U.S. adversary to crack down on dissidents abroad, including in the United States and NATO-allied countries.

One of the murder-for-hire plots took place in July and August of this year, the indictment says. The Venezuelan operative and one of the Cuban operatives allegedly recruited a Brooklyn resident to take photos and videos of two locations associated with an unnamed Russian dissident, promising him $1,000 to $1,500 to carry out the “gravely serious work.” Another $40,000 was offered to “eliminate” or “disappear” the target of the surveillance.

The operatives believed the Russian dissident lived in the Washington, D.C., area, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters at a briefing Tuesday.  The Brooklyn resident was willing to take photos, the indictment said, but expressed unwillingness to “do the other stuff” — as in, kill the dissident. The operatives then allegedly asked the Brooklyn resident if he knew of anybody else who was interested.

“Let me know as soon as possible because I have a chain and my boss has questions,” one of the Cuban recruiters wrote, according to the indictment. “I have people in Mexico right now and they’re delayed. I only need a response to know if someone can do the work. It doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow just need to know if the[y] can.”

Some skepticism is of course always warranted when dealing with official US claims related to what Russian intelligence is up to.

$25,000 to unalive someone for being a “bad guy” who was “telling lies about Russia.” And get this, they were also “spreading dirt about my country” and “distorting history.”

It reads like a cartoon. https://t.co/BLhHLoSxUF

— Aaron Andrew Hickman (@hickman0000) September 16, 2026

For example, the latter part of the above – where a foreign agent reportedly broadly asks his asset whether he knows anyone else that can do the killing – seems amateurish, dubious and needlessly high risk.

The Kremlin has on Wednesday rejected the claims, describing that there’s simply no evidence to even warrant a serious explanation:

Until “any plausible evidence” emerges, there is no point in commenting on statements by the US Department of Justice about the exposure of a number of individuals allegedly working for Russian intelligence, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“Until we have heard and seen any credible evidence and arguments based on something tangible, we do not consider it necessary to comment on this news,” he noted in response to a request to comment on a statement by US Attorney General Todd Blanche, who said that a number of individuals working for Russian intelligence had been exposed in the country.

New: The Russian government backed a murder-for-hire plot on U.S. soil, according to this new indictment from the DOJ.

cc @CourthouseNews pic.twitter.com/1EcQctp8Rm

— Erik Uebelacker (@Uebey) September 15, 2026

Washington has over recent years lobbed significant accusations of espionage and nefarious recruitment schemes against Russian intelligence, especially since the Ukraine war began. Russian intel seems much more active in Europe, however.

The other country which tends to get named in these reports is Iran. The Trump administration has even accused the IRGC of its own assassin-for-hire plot against the president himself.

* * * Add two to cart

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJ Media,

Democrats can be unintentionally hilarious sometimes. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) reposted a chart on X Tuesday claiming housing prices are “the most unaffordable in history,” and that it was Trump’s fault.

There was just one huge problem.

Great work, @realDonaldTrump!

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 15, 2026

The chart Newsom shared showed that the housing affordability gap actually widened during Joe Biden’s presidency, and X users noticed almost instantly, flooding his replies with screenshots of the very data he’d just posted as though it helped his argument. It didn’t take long for the pile-on to turn Newsom’s own post into a meme about his reading comprehension.

But the funny thing about it is that Democrats keep doing this. In July 2025, the Democratic National Committee posted a chart that they thought proved grocery prices were spiraling out of control in Trump’s second term.

The chart told a different story. It showed a huge spike under Biden. The DNC had unwittingly undermined its own attack on Trump. Social media users mocked the party within hours, dissecting the chart line by line, forcing the DNC to quietly delete the post… not that that stopped us from making fun of them anyway.

@TheDemocrats Democrats really are this stupid. https://t.co/SlkAQ1ol2K

— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) July 25, 2025

Then came Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who spent the Schumer Shutdown standoff in October 2025 defending Obamacare subsidies. In the process, he put up a chart on X arguing for expanded tax credits. What the chart actually showed was health care costs more than doubling since 2000, climbing at a steady clip both before and after Obamacare passed, proving that Obamacare had failed to slow down the rising costs of healthcare, let alone reduce it.

Costs have never declined, flattened, or stabilized since Obamacare took effect, and every subsequent “fix” failed to make coverage “affordable.”

Health care is already unaffordable. We cannot allow premiums to skyrocket by 75% for millions of Americans. That’s what this struggle is about. https://t.co/rHFY56HqN4

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 1, 2025

And then Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) picked up the baton in late November 2025. She claimed in a post (with a supporting chart) that power bills had surged 11% under Trump and blamed him for rising past-due balances.

The problem with her claim was that the utility rate spike she referenced happened under Biden.

Under President Trump, electricity prices are surging – up 11%! – leaving millions behind on their utility bills, with past-due balances at an all-time high. American families deserve better. https://t.co/OQX8zzl6DB

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) November 26, 2025

X users called her out quickly and spent the rest of the day passing around corrected versions of her own chart.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Democrats and charts – they just don’t mix.

The funny thing is that I’m sure they’ll keep trying. They think they can make an accusation accompanied by a chart, and it looks authoritative and true. In the end, they just prove how stupid they are.

Federal prosecutors have accused two former Robinhood engineers of turning their access to the company’s crypto plans into personal trades, according to Bloomberg.

Hefu Chai, 36, and Huaisong Xiang, 30, are accused of learning in advance which digital assets Robinhood intended to add to its platform. Rather than simply keeping that information inside the company, prosecutors allege they positioned themselves in derivatives tied to those tokens before the news reached the public.

Bloomberg writes that the trades were placed through Hyperliquid, a decentralized platform offering perpetual futures, and allegedly occurred over a period spanning 2025 and 2026. Authorities say both men walked away with more than $50,000 in profits.

Robinhood says the activity was uncovered internally and subsequently brought to the attention of regulators and law enforcement. Neither man still works for the company.

A Robinhood spokesperson said the firm has “zero tolerance for insider trading” and maintains controls governing employee access to sensitive information, including details surrounding upcoming crypto additions.

The criminal cases are now moving through federal court. Xiang was released on a $50,000 bond after a judge declined prosecutors’ request to keep him detained over concerns that he might leave the country. His attorney, Robert Stahl, says Xiang denies wrongdoing and plans to contest the case. Chai had not publicly commented on the allegations at the time of the report.

And so crypto continues its remarkable technological achievement of recreating virtually every questionable activity from traditional finance, only faster, with more leverage and usually with a Discord server somewhere in the background.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune revived discussion of a potential US diesel export ban with reporters Tuesday, a day after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said any export halts on crude or petroleum products were unlikely to lower consumer prices. The divergence in messaging suggests growing pressure across the Trump administration to contain surging fuel costs ahead of the midterm elections as the global refining crisis pushed the US diesel crack spread to a record $117 a barrel early Wednesday morning.

US Diesel Crack Spread v. US 10Y 

A diesel export ban could force domestic refiners to slash production, shift profits to overseas competitors, and worsen global fuel shortages while delivering little relief to US consumers, according to Barclays refining and midstream analyst Theresa Chen.

“We continue to view the possibility of an export ban as both detrimental to the US refining complex and unlikely to provide the intended price relief,” Chen wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday.

Chen outlined one major problem: keeping diesel inside the country does not guarantee it can reach gas pumps.

Gulf Coast demand is already supplied with the industrial fuel, while pipeline capacity to move additional fuel to the East Coast, Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions is limited. Domestic markets connected by those pipelines would be unable to absorb current Gulf Coast export volumes, the analyst said.

Chen added that with surplus diesel backing up, Gulf Coast refiners would likely have to reduce processing rates. Those cuts could spread to the Midwest as displaced Gulf Coast barrels pressure regional supply balances.

Any export ban covering refined products without corresponding restrictions on crude would allow overseas plants to keep buying US oil and increase production while US refiners cut runs. Refining profits would shift abroad, with little benefit for domestic buyers.

Retaliation in the era of resource nationalism is another major risk because removing US diesel from an already tight global market could deepen shortages for trading partners. If European or Asian suppliers responded with their own restrictions, consumers in regions highly dependent on imported fuel could face skyrocketing prices.

Professional subscribers can read more about refined products markets here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Update(1135ET): The Houthis have released new footage which appears to confirm the earlier Saudi F-15 jet shootdown, with aircraft falling in the Marib area. The footage shows militants celebrating near the wreckage.

Below is the clip as released by Ansar Allah officials, which has since been given confirmation by some foreign and international outlets. It suggests that the Houthis have locally-made ability to down advanced aircraft, which should seriously worry Riyadh and Washington.

مشاهد نوعية لإسقاط طائرة مقاتلة سعودية من نوع F15 وحطامها في محافظة مأرب – 16 سبتمبر 2026م pic.twitter.com/rk0suliePT

— الإعلام الحربي اليمني (@MMY1444) September 16, 2026

According to the latest on the fighting in Yemen, clashes are intensifying:

Yemen’s pro-government Southern Giants Forces say that they are engaged in clashes with Houthi forces on the Kahboub front near the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

The government-aligned forces claim in a social media post that they have inflicted heavy personnel and equipment losses on the Houthi forces.

Global oil prices continue climbing amid a slew of negative headlines:

• WRIGHT: LOOKING AT USING DPA TO INCREASE REFINING CAPACITY
• WRIGHT ON EAST-WEST PIPELINE: 3 PUMPING STATIONS WERE HIT

From bad to worse for the coalition:

Looks like the Yemenis weren’t lying about downing a Saudi jet today. pic.twitter.com/2t4tTYoa6F

— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) September 16, 2026

*  *  *

Yemen’s Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement has claimed to have shot down a Saudi fighter jet in a Wednesday statement, saying they utilized domestic made munitions to do it.

“The Yemeni Armed Forces, with Allah’s aid and grace, succeeded in shooting down a Saudi F-15 fighter jet while it was carrying out hostile operations,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree announced.

He said the fighter jet had been targeted “using a locally made” missile over Marib – after the Saudi coalition has launched some 450 strikes. The area of the alleged downing is some 75 miles east of Sanaa.

Saudi authorities have not acknowledged any shootdown and have not immediately commented on the claim.

Overnight, the big news out of the conflict focused on Saudi claims that it had intercepted a Houthi drone targeting Yemen in a “heinous” act targeting Islam’s holiest site.

However, the Houthis are vehemently denying sending a drone on Mecca. “Our operations target its oil facilities and military bases, which are far removed from the sacred sites,” Saree said further.

The Houthi military spokesman called out the “fabrications and lies propagated by the criminal al-Saud regime cannot deceive anyone.”

Missile alerts had been issued for the population of Mecca, and plenty of old and fake social media videos purported to capture footage of a drone inbound on Mecca, but so far no clear evidence has emerged of the alleged targeting.

But the Saudi claims were enough to get Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to condemn Wednesday “in the strongest possible terms the dastardly and heinous” the alleged attack on Mecca.

“The people of Pakistan are saddened and perturbed by this outrageous act,” he said on X.

Unconfirmed image of downed jet posted by Iranian state media:

On Wednesday morning, Yemeni Army confirmed that it had shot down a Saudi F-15 fighter aircraft over Marib Province. pic.twitter.com/4nk1d1DYi6

— IRNA News Agency ☫ (@IrnaEnglish) September 16, 2026

Pakistan and Turkey just recently this summer signed a comprehensive “Mecca Defense Pact”, and the Saudi claims that Mecca was targeted by drone are perhaps intended to secure the help of allies in dealing with the advancing Houthis menace while a Red Sea ‘siege for siege’ policy is still in effect. As for the lates developments to emerge Wednesday, via Newsquawk:

Houthis say they carried out two military operations, targeting Saudi Aramco in Yanbu with dozens of ballistic missiles and drones and Khamis Mushait Air Base with a number of ballistic missiles.

The damaged Saudi East-West pipeline could still take five to six weeks to come back online, according to some estimates.

Ahead of today’s FOMC announcement at 2pm, the prevailing consensus is that Warsh will raise rates but he doesn’t need to, as tariff inflation is now fading fast, the bulk of headline inflation is driven by one-time supply shocks from the Iran war which the Fed is powerless to fix, and the upcoming change to the PCE methodology will trim the YoY print by about 0.3%, suggesting that the Fed will be hiking at a time when core inflation is the lowest in years. In fact, as Goldman and many others suggested, the only reason why Warsh will hike is because the market is now certain Warsh will hike as the Fed does not want to disappoint the market and spark a rout … thereby making a mockery of his prior statements that he won’t be led by the market (we previewed all this in great detail here), to wit:

The CPI report had little impact on our inflation view but pushed market pricing of the probability of a hike to nearly 90%, which puts pressure on the FOMC to deliver a hike to avoid the market reaction that would likely follow from remaining on hold… We expect the FOMC to make only the minimum necessary change to its statement, which will likely note that the FOMC is hiking in support of the goal of returning inflation to 2% but will likely avoid providing guidance on the path forward or the criteria for further hikes. – Goldman

But what if Warsh does precisely what he warned he would, and – ignoring market certainty and expectations of a 25bps rate hike, not to mention the resulting tantrum – he keeps rates on hold? 

To be sure, it’s hard enough to go against the market, so one can only imagine how hard it is for Fed Chair Warsh and the FOMC to stare it down. Yet as Standard Chartered’s Steven Englander writes, “there seems to have been a market echo chamber pushing up expectations despite a limited amount of incoming data, little sign that inflation is going up, some indications that underlying inflation is much lower if tariffs and other factors are removed and the prospect of more informative data within a couple of meetings.”

As Englander notes, much of Warsh’s discussion has focused on the Fed influencing the market too much, but the move from the pre-Jackson Hole ‘Warsh has to show that he is willing to hike’ to ‘Warsh will hike if inflation doesn’t come down’ to ‘Warsh has to hike unless the next CPI is really soft’ to ‘Now the debate is on how many hikes he has to do’ in two weeks suggests that the influencing pattern can go both ways.

To be sure, while the path of least resistance may be to hike, the Std Chartered strategist sees a real cost down the road if the hiking turns out to be unneeded and the FOMC has to reverse. As a result, and setting aside market pricing, Englander believes that there is a very low cost to waiting.

Ok, assume Warsh does not “rip the bandaid” simply because the economy does not merit it, and keeps rates on hold? We already noted that according to JPMorgan this outcome would shock the market and send stocks sliding:

Not surprisingly, Englander has been asked by his readers how Warsh could manage disappointing the market in such a major way. Well, as he discusses in his latest note, it would be hard for Warsh to avoid accusations of being the President’s man and have his credibility questioned harshly, but that is the Day 1 reaction.

At the press conference he could stress that he is opposed to giving forward guidance but not opposed to backward guidance, i.e. explaining precisely the rationale behind the decision and warning the market that the Fed will not be afraid to wrong foot them if it feels pricing is wrong.

Subsequently if others like Waller and Williams who are not tainted with Trump independence issues, defend the hold the market is likely to calm down. And, as a hedge, it wouldn’t be forward guidance to say that the FOMC can’t do a 50bp move if it becomes clear that underlying inflation is stubbornly high or rising.

As Englander concludes, in theory this is a second-tier meeting – there is no urgency about moving or not moving. But it is a first-tier meeting because it can define how much stomach Warsh has to be independent of the market. The long game is that if Warsh makes a strong defense of his stance then the credibility crisis is short term. By year-end he can be hiking or holding with more information and moving decisively if a hold is wrong.

But if the perception emerges that Warsh is afraid to face down the market this will be the beginning of a wash, rince, repeat cycle. Market participants will assess the weak side of the Fed stance and press that weakness knowing that the FOMC will bend.  

More in Englander’s full note “Hiking is the wrong choice.”

Thanks to how mean President Trump has been, Canada could become the first-ever “associate member” of the European Union under a proposal unveiled Wednesday by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, as Ottawa looks to reduce its economic dependence on the United States.

Speaking during her annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the front row as the first foreign head of government ever to attend the speech, von der Leyen said Brussels wants to take its relationship with Canada to an unprecedented level.

“We must urgently reimagine our partnerships,” von der Leyen said, before telling Carney she wanted to work with him on “opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.”

There is just one complication: no such status currently exists.

EU treaties allow European countries to apply for full membership, while Brussels maintains an assortment of trade, association and single-market agreements with countries outside the bloc. But “associate membership” would be something new, meaning its rights, obligations and legal structure would have to be negotiated essentially from scratch.

Reuters notes that any serious move toward such a status would also face the politically difficult task of winning support from all 27 EU member states.

And Carney himself has stopped short of calling for full EU membership. On Sunday, after a Wall Street Journal report that Canada was exploring membership, he described what Ottawa is seeking as a “unique alliance” with Europe. He addresses the European Parliament on Thursday.

The substance of what Brussels is proposing, however, goes considerably beyond another trade agreement.

Canada and the EU already have CETA, their comprehensive free-trade deal. Von der Leyen said Wednesday that the two sides now want to move “from CETA to an Alliance for the Future” encompassing manufacturing, technology, defense, energy, critical minerals, batteries, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity and Arctic security.

“We will integrate defence industrial bases,” she said.

That process has already begun.

Canada became the first non-European country allowed to participate in the EU’s €150 billion SAFE defense procurement program under an agreement signed in February and formally concluded by the EU Council in June. The arrangement allows eligible Canadian companies and Canadian-origin products to participate in procurement financed by the program.

The EU-Canada defense relationship has also expanded into military mobility, interoperability, maritime and space security and defense-industrial cooperation.

Then there’s the economics of the idea. Roughly 70% of Canadian exports go to the United States, making any rapid decoupling unrealistic. At the same time, Trump’s tariffs and repeated talk of a 51st state have given Ottawa a powerful incentive to diversify. Europe, meanwhile, needs resources. 

Von der Leyen warned Wednesday that Europe remains more than 80% dependent on China for many critical raw materials, with dependence reaching 90% for some rare earths.

“No country can do this alone,” she said.

Canada possesses significant reserves of nickel, uranium, potash, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements, among other commodities increasingly regarded as strategic inputs for batteries, semiconductors, defense equipment and energy infrastructure.

That makes a deeper Canada-EU relationship potentially complementary: Europe gets another source of strategic commodities and energy while Canada gets a large alternative market, industrial investment and greater access to European defense and technology programs.

There is nevertheless a potentially uncomfortable tradeoff for Ottawa. If “associate membership” eventually includes meaningful access to the EU’s roughly €18 trillion single market, Canada could be required to align portions of its regulatory regime with EU rules. Reuters notes that this could leave Ottawa accepting European regulations without receiving the voting rights enjoyed by actual EU members.

Canada could gain market access while becoming, at least in some areas, a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker.

Authored by Timothy Frudd via The Epoch Times,

The House of Representatives voted on Sept. 15 to pass a war powers resolution that calls for President Donald Trump to end U.S. military action against Iran.

Following a floor debate on a war powers resolution aimed at directing Trump to remove U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran without congressional authorization, the House voted 220-204 to pass House Concurrent Resolution 93.

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) initially introduced the resolution in April.

During Tuesday’s floor debate, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said the war with Iran has been a “strategic failure,” leaving the United States with depleted weapons stockpiles and a “tab of more than $100 billion that taxpayers will have to cover.”

Meeks, who introduced a war powers resolution passed by the House in June, said on Tuesday that the resolution “made clear what the Constitution makes clear: Congress, not the president, has the power to decide when the United States goes to war.”

In his remarks, Meeks asked if the war had produced any of its promised objectives.

“The Strait of Hormuz remains a source of enormous risk to global energy markets, and Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, despite what the administration claims, clearly remain.”

The House previously passed two war powers resolutions in an effort to limit Trump’s authority to direct U.S. military actions against the Iranian regime.

However, the resolutions have only acted as a symbolic rebuke of the president’s military campaign against Iran.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973, also known as the War Powers Act, is a federal law that aims to limit the authority of the president to authorize military actions without congressional approval.

The Trump administration has disputed the War Powers Act as unconstitutional and not binding.

The House voted 215-208 in favor of a war powers resolution directing Trump to end the war in Iran on June 3.

Reps. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) joined all voting Democrats in supporting the resolution.

The vote drew a rebuke from Trump, who criticized the Republicans for joining Democrats to pass the resolution.

“Yesterday, in a meaningless vote, the House voted, 4 bad Republicans and all of the Dumocrats, to limit my War Powers, right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the War with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Who would do such an unpatriotic thing,” Trump wrote in a June 4 statement on Truth Social.

On June 23, the Senate voted 50-48 in favor of the concurrent resolution to limit Trump’s ability to direct U.S. military action against Iran.

However, the resolution was reversed the following day after Trump confronted Republican senators.

The House also voted 214-208 on July 23 to pass a war powers resolution directing the president to remove U.S. military forces from hostilities with Iran.

The same four Republican representatives joined Democrats in supporting the measure.

Just hours after the House approved the second war powers resolution, the Senate voted 47-49 against a similar resolution.

The United States launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on Feb. 28, conducting strikes on thousands of Iranian military targets.

Trump announced a ceasefire in early April before the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding outlining a plan for peace on June 17.

Following the collapse of the memorandum of understanding, the United States resumed strikes on Iran in July, carrying out nearly two weeks of daily attacks.

As peace talks have stalled over the past couple of months, the Trump administration has also launched Operation Economic Outcast to increase pressure on Iran through sanctions.

On Monday, Trump suggested that his administration was open to possibly resuming negotiations with Iran.

“The failing Nation of Iran wants to make a deal, quickly and badly,” Trump wrote in a statement on Truth Social.

“I will determine whether or not the U.S.A. will choose to engage – the concept of which we are open to.”