Authored by Jeremy Lott via The Epoch Times,

The terror attacks 25 years ago this week had enduring costs for America’s commercial aviation sector.

Today’s domestic fliers are on balance worse off for it, with higher costs, fewer choices, and more delays.

That’s because, on Sept. 11, 2001, men who were part of the al Qaeda Islamist terror network bought tickets and boarded four passenger planes out of Boston, northern Virginia, and Newark, New Jersey.

Once airborne, the 19 terrorists hijacked those planes and managed to fly two of them into the World Trade Center towers and one into the Pentagon.

The remaining plane, United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco, was brought down by a revolt of passengers and crew who had pieced together what was happening with the other planes.

The Boeing 757 crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, instead of its intended target, which the National Park Service identified as the U.S. Capitol.

At the World Trade Center, more than 2,700 people died that day.

When Flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania, all 44 people, including seven crew members and 33 passengers, including the four hijackers, died on impact.

At the Pentagon, where American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles Airport to Los Angeles crashed, 189 people died, including 125 people in the building, six airline crew members, 53 passengers, plus the five hijackers.

Airlines in the Red

For the airlines, the financial impact was awful and bordered on existential.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all flights for several days. Once the planes were cleared for takeoff, many would-be passengers were jittery about being airborne. After all, they had just watched domestic planes slam into skyscrapers on their television sets, over and over.

These planes had long been seen as mechanical marvels that shortened long trips and brought the world closer together. The al Qaeda hijackings turned them instead into visible instruments of previously unimaginable destruction on U.S. soil.

Looking back at that day, the International Air Transport Association did not sugarcoat it.

“On September 11, 2001, the world changed forever,” Willie Walsh, former director general of the air travel trade group, said in a fact sheet for the 20th anniversary of the day.

“Those of us old enough to understand what was happening at the time still remember where we were when we heard the horrific news. Indeed, for many, it probably still feels like yesterday.”

The attacks were not only “assaults on the United States of America,” as far as the world of aviation was concerned. Those weaponized planes were also aimed straight at the “global air transportation system – a facilitator of peace and freedom,” he said.

Financial fallout from the attacks was swift and severe. Revenues and profits nosedived.

U.S. passenger airlines had posted profits of $2.2 billion in 2000. They lost $8 billion in 2001, and revenues did not climb back to 2000 levels until 2004.

Those losses contributed to the bankruptcies of several air carriers, most notably US Airways and United Airlines in 2002. United stayed aloft, but US Airways eventually was absorbed by American Airlines.

Airport Security Costs

An act of Congress created the Transportation Security Administration, popularly known as the TSA, in November 2001 to help address security concerns. The TSA took over screening at most airports.

The Aviation and Transportation Security Act also greatly expanded a previously existing air marshals program to put many more armed, hidden officers on flights to thwart future would-be hijackers.

Costs for U.S. fliers grew higher, in part to pay for the new, slower airport security. U.S. taxpayers are paying for it as well. The amount spent on the TSA has varied from year to year. At present, the yearly price tag is in the $11 billion range.

Gary Leff, proprietor of the popular View from the Wing website, is not happy about that.

“It’s not clear what we’ve gotten spending over $10 billion annually,” he told The Epoch Times.

TSA oversaw the formalization of what some critics have called security theater, with belts and shoes off, liquids limited in size, passengers subjected to various scanning devices, and lots and lots of plastic tubs.

Bill McGee, a senior fellow for aviation at the American Economic Liberties Project, says he still believes that TSA security beats the alternative.

“It’s really easy to beat up on the TSA, and I’ve done it quite often myself. In fact, there’s an entire chapter on TSA criticism in my book ‘Attention All Passengers,'” he told The Epoch Times.

At the same time, he said, it’s important to remember “what airline and airport security was like prior to 9/11,” when “security was the responsibility of the airlines, and it was often non-existent.”

“I think we can all agree that the airlines’ efforts in outsourcing airport security on 9/11 was a spectacular failure,” McGee said, adding that TSA’s existence indicates “that aviation security is taken seriously enough that it’s the responsibility of the federal government.”

He said he would not want to have such a “vital function that is so intrinsic to national security be outsourced to the lowest bidders again.”

Where TSA Can Improve

Yet there are downsides to having the TSA as it is currently organized. Instead of scrapping the agency, however, McGee suggested, “Let’s think instead about how Congress can fix the TSA for all of us.”

The federal government funds the TSA. When government shutdowns happen, as they do periodically, this creates problems for airport screening. TSA still functions during government shutdowns but not well.

Agents go unpaid, sometimes for long stretches. They have a statutory guarantee of back pay once the government is funded again. Yet overtime is discouraged, and absenteeism rises. This leads to longer screening times and missed flights.

That is what happened during the 76-day partial government shutdown of agencies under the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year.

Ha Nguyen McNeill, acting TSA administrator, testified in late March that the “cost of coming to work [was] becoming more untenable for the workforce.” The agency’s daily call-out rates had increased from 4 percent to 11 percent and at some airports were greater than 50 percent.

This reduced screening capacity was hiking wait times to “over four and a half hours at certain airports, raising major security risks and missed flights for passengers,” McNeill said in prepared remarks.

In contrast, a handful of airports participate in the Screening Partnership Program. This allows private contractors to do the screening, under TSA regulations and nominal supervision, with a different line of funding.

The largest airport in the program is San Francisco International Airport (SFO). At roughly the same time that McNeill was sounding the alarm before Congress, the airport was reassuring fliers that they could enjoy their spring break travels.

“While we’ve seen and heard about the long security checkpoint lines over the last few weeks at major airports around the country, SFO is NOT experiencing this issue,” the airport announced on social media.

During the partial government shutdown, the airport’s screener-contractors were “being paid without interruption,” and screening was “operating as usual.”

The San Francisco airport regularly posts its security checkpoint wait times. For Sept. 6, waits ran between one and nine minutes for general boarding and between zero and four minutes for fliers with TSA PreCheck authorization.

The San Francisco example illustrates the gap between what TSA might be and what it actually is, Leff said. “Instead of regulating security provided by others,” he said, the screening agency “largely regulates itself, which has led to a lack of accountability.”

For instance, border agencies frequently operate what are called red teams, whose job it is to try to get contraband through a checkpoint.

TSA ran red teams for years. They found that TSA screeners are very bad at catching items that have been flagged as dangerous.

“After a series of embarrassing disclosures about their failure rates detecting dangerous items at checkpoints [with] failure rates over 90 percent a decade ago, they simply stopped releasing information on their effectiveness publicly,” Leff said.

As the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, Leff said that the response to the attacks has had bad effects for both fliers and would-be fliers.

“For travel, it’s meant that trips take longer. That means fewer trips by air than there’d otherwise be. It likely means more car trips, which are far less safe, and more loss of life as a result. But we never examine second- and third-order effects,” he said.

Last year, 64 people on commercial airlines died in the United States. All of the deaths came when an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with a small commuter plane over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport on Jan. 29. Three people in the helicopter also died.

Over that same period, 36,640 traffic fatalities were reported on American roads.

Progress and Innovation

Former International Air Transport Association boss Walsh saw one bright spot at American airports in the first 20 years following Sept. 11.

He thought that TSA PreCheck, where frequent fliers trade more information about themselves and a small fee for expedited screening, was worth celebrating.

Walsh acknowledged that “extraordinary measures” were probably necessary to get things flying again, post Sept. 11, but he made the case that the need for many of these measures had long-since passed.

Future American airport security could “move beyond the one-size-fits-all, rules-based model that still … governs passenger security screening” and establish “firm deadlines” to sunset unnecessarily stringent rules, he said. These changes would make sure that “what we are doing is relevant.”

James Fallows is a journalist, a small craft pilot and the author of several books, including a few on aviation.

“Free Flight: From Airline Hell to a New Age of Travel,” was the original title of one of those books, published only months before Sept. 11, 2001.

Fallows saw the beginnings of something new taking shape. He observed smaller craft playing a bigger role in transportation and thought that would grow into a somewhat decentralized air-taxi system in the future.

The Epoch Times asked him about how the terror attacks had affected that development, and how he sized up its prospects today.

“So much has changed in the 25 years since the 9/11 attacks,” Fallows said. For several years, “dramatically tightened security rules limited private air travel of all sorts.”

However, that was not the whole story.

“The increasing congestion of airlines, and the ongoing progress in aircraft and engine design, has led to steady growth in private jet travel – for those who can afford it.”

The next step is to bring that experience to more people. Many companies are working to create an “air taxi model” that people of modest means can afford to hail, Fallows said.

The global diesel market – already trading at record prices – is set to further tighten in the coming months and keep fuel prices high, raising the prices of all goods and threatening the inflation targets of the central banks.

Industry officials, who gathered at the APPEC petroleum conference in Singapore this week, warned that the market has not seen the worst of the diesel crisis yet. Analysts say the real stress in oil markets is in the diesel market right now, OilPrice reported.

Global fuel markets are very tight and inflexible, despite the higher crude oil flows out of the Persian Gulf in recent weeks, Russell Hardy, chief executive of the world’s biggest independent oil trader, Vitol Group, said on Tuesday.

“We’re still not running enough refining capacity to prevent those draws, and we keep eating into the surplus that exists around the world,” Hardy said at the event, as carried by Bloomberg.

Despite the uptick in flows from the Strait of Hormuz, only 1 million barrels per day (bpd) out of an estimated 10 million bpd outbound flows are refined products, the rest is crude.

Refinery capacity is constrained in the Middle East, due to Iranian strikes on refineries and the trickle of fuel flows through Hormuz.

Moreover, refinery capacity in Russia is also severely restricted by nearly-daily Ukrainian drone strikes at Russian refineries, while Russia has banned diesel exports until at least the end of September.

Refineries in the United States and elsewhere have been running at maximum capacity this summer, having delayed maintenance. But they are unlikely to continue operating at these elevated utilization rates for much longer.

If the global refining system can sustain these processing rates until the end of this year, “it is going to be an achievement,” Shaikh Khaled Ahmad Al Sabah, managing director for international marketing at Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), told Bloomberg.

“I think we’re going to see a very difficult winter coming in Northwest Europe,” the executive said. “This is only the beginning.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Oil tanker rates have jumped to record highs as escalating risks to shipping in and out of the Middle East are prompting traders and tanker operators to undertake inefficient and more expensive trade routes.

While the crude oil supply is actually there, shipping it through the Strait of Hormuz remains a very risky endeavor, especially in light of the escalating U.S.-Iran tanker war in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, while Saudi Arabia has started to move crude cargoes out of the region through the north of the Red Sea and from Egypt’s Mediterranean ports.

The much longer workarounds are tying tankers and supertankers for longer with the shippers, tightening the market of available vessels so much that rates are skyrocketing to all-time highs. 

For example, the benchmark daily rate for a very large crude carrier (VLCC) to ship oil from the Middle East to China has hit a record high of almost $800,000, per data compiled by Bloomberg.

The price of chartering a supertanker to ship crude from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Asia has now hit a lump-sum fee of $29.5 million per run, and that’s not even factoring in fees for additional war risks or unexpected delays. 

“The VLCC positions list is now so tight that no one would be too surprised if we see the WS 400 mark breached for a Fujairah/East run off a prompt-ish position before long, crazy as it may sound,” shipbroker Fearnleys said in its latest weekly report for the week ended September 9.

“The oil still needs to get out through the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranians have increased efforts to stop that from happening. It’s a fragile state of affairs,” the shipbroker added.

“There’s quite a few bottlenecks all at the same time,” Alex Grant, Equinor’s global head of crude, products and liquids trading, told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the APPEC petroleum conference in Singapore.

“The market is quite stressed with all of that, and that’s showing up in the shipping rates.”

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Pakistan is about to get some energy relief with tankers carrying Qatari LNG set to arrive in the country this month. The first cargo is seen arriving as early as Thursday, Bloomberg reported, citing ship-tracking data.

Pakistan has been struggling to keep the lights on after Qatar declared force majeure on its exports following Iranian strikes that caused damage to its Ras Laffan LNG hub. Since then, Pakistan has been forced to turn to spot LNG markets and pay hefty premiums for the occasional shipment. Qatar was the biggest supplier of liquefied natural gas to the South Asian nation, under long-term contracts.

The country has issued several prompt liquefied gas delivery tenders over the past three months, consistently paying $20 per million British thermal units and more-a tender earlier this month ended without an order, after Pakistan’s state gas company only received one offer, whose price was $27 per million British thermal units. This is three times higher than pre-war LNG prices that Pakistan was paying.

“The international LNG price is around $23.18 per MMBtu, whereas the bid received was $26.969 per MMBtu. The price was considered too high, so a fresh tender has been issued,” a senior Pakistan LNG Limited executive said, as quoted by Pakistani media earlier this month. Following the failure of that tender, Pakistan LNG issued a new one.

The Qatari cargoes would go some way towards alleviating the energy crisis in Pakistan, where power generation costs have soared due to the gas crunch and rolling blackouts have become a fixture of life, sometimes lasting for 24 hours in some parts of the country. As of July, these were 38% higher than a year earlier and since then have likely one even higher as LNG on the spot market has also trended higher while QatarEnergy announced an extension of its force majeure.

Swedish freight company Einride’s announcement last month that it plans to deploy 500 Tesla Semis on US roads, the largest publicly announced commitment to electric Class 8 trucks, suggests a shift toward fleet electrification. It also brings the next phase of trucking technology into focus: the gradual commercialization of autonomous freight.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has targeted late 2026 or early 2027 for self-driving capabilities to begin working on the Semi. That remains a Musk target, not a confirmed commercial rollout. Any version requiring a human operator would be supervised automation, like FSD on Tesla sedans, SUVs, and the Cybertruck.

NEWS: Google announced a major electric trucking project in Texas featuring Tesla Semi.

Google, Nevoya and Center for Green Market Activation will deploy:

• 25 electric semi trucks.
• Dedicated charging infrastructure
• An all-electric freight route between Houston & Dallas. pic.twitter.com/ZxSbFIJk5C

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) September 9, 2026

Needham analysts Chris Pierce and Mackenzie Holleran see a broader industry inflection point approaching in 2027, as factory-integrated autonomous trucks begin reaching fleets in greater numbers. Their note to clients says automation in trucking will lower operating costs, while longer operating hours could accelerate deliveries and shift market share toward larger carriers.

The analysts said that driverless trucking is already moving beyond technical demonstrations as developers expand routes, remove onboard safety observers and secure carrier commitments. The next test is whether carriers enter a mass-adoption supercycle to automate their fleets and drive down labor costs.

“We believe the debate has shifted from ‘can autonomous trucking work?’ to ‘how quickly can it scale?'” the analysts said.

They continued, “We see compelling benefits for early adopters and eventual trucking industry consolidation, underwritten by the increasing rate of adoption as industry participants see autonomy as a driver of share gain tilting the capacity playing field to lower cost providers capable of driving longer routes in shorter timeframes better satisfying customer demand.”

The analysts identified Aurora as the industry leader, citing expanded routes and operating conditions, customer contracts and the removal of safety observers from certain trucks in July. Kodiak targets observer removal by year-end, with Plus AI targeting driverless operations in 2027.

They noted that long-haul freight “represents the earliest commercial opportunity for autonomous trucking.”

Here’s how much carriers will save: 

Higher asset utilization… Autonomous trucks are not constrained by fatigue or federal hours-of-service regulations. The 10 hour Dallas to Phoenix route can be completed in 10 hours leveraging autonomy, vs human drivers facing an 8 continuous driving hour burden, and autonomous trucks have unlimited patience to wait out inclement weather as needed. Outside of fueling, charging, loading and maintenance, autonomous trucks can operate nearly continuously, with AUR citing a potential more than 2x increase in asset utilization for carriers.

… and lower operating costs... Early autonomous per mile rates cited by AUR and The American Transportation Research Institute show autonomous to be meaningfully cheaper than human drivers, with labor the single largest operating expense for most carriers. Cost savings are compounded by improved fuel efficiency and fewer at fault accidents reducing insurance costs, creating a secondary economic benefit beyond first order labor savings.

While solving for a structural labor problem…The American Trucking Association estimates the current US. truck driver shortage at over ~82k drivers, a growing gap due to rising freight demand and average driver age and retirement rates, with industry sources emphasizing that the challenge is increasingly one of driver quality and retention rather than simply the number of licensed drivers. 

For Tesla, the first step toward automation would likely be Semi trucks running supervised FSD with a human operator. The broader industry opportunity is fully driverless Class 8 adoption, which could begin next year as carriers seek to reduce driver labor costs and increase fleet utilization.

The pace of adoption will depend on safety and production of lidar, radar, and the computing needed for each truck.  

The Iranian ballistic missile attack on an American base in Jordan this week ranks as one of the single biggest missile volleys sent over Jordan since the start of the US-led war.

The Tuesday night into Wednesday attack targeted Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, multiple international reports say. Widely shared but unconfirmed social media videos appeared to show several direct impacts on the base. But at least some of the images have been authenticated by outlets like Dropsite News.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) sought to downplay the attack, saying initially that all troops were account for, but not immediately divulging whether casualties resulted. 

Since then, the Pentagon has said that no deaths resulted from the strikes on Jordan, during which time over 30 Patriot missiles were deployed as an aerial defensive measure.

While the Pentagon has remained mum on specifics, officials have acknowledged light material damage at the base.

New reporting from CBS says that several US military aircraft were damaged in the attack, based on anonymous defense officials, with at least one warplane being knocked out of commission:

Multiple American military aircraft were damaged in Iranian strikes overnight Tuesday into Wednesday local time on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, people with direct knowledge of the matter told CBS News. 

One A-10 Thunderbolt, an attack aircraft known as the Warthog, was struck and lost a wing, the sources said. 

Roughly eight F-15s sustained light damage and were reportedly put back into service, according to the people familiar with the damage, who spoke to CBS News under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Video shared by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency purportedly shows multiple Iranian missiles striking Jordan’s Muwaffaq al-Salti Air Base as dozens of air-defense interceptors are fired. Drop Site has not independently verified the video. pic.twitter.com/YB0yMuSWLU

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) September 9, 2026

If the report is accurate, this means that clearly a number of missiles got through the dozens of Patriots launched to intercept. In summary…

• Around eight F-15s reportedly suffered damage, while an A-10 Warthog was struck and lost a wing
• US forces fired more than 30 Patriot missiles during the attack, costing over $126 million

Unconfirmed video: “The US Army is transferring Black Hawk helicopters from the American Muwaqqaf Al-Salti base in Jordan, including damaged helicopters.”

الجيش الأميركي ينقل مروحيات بلاك هوك من قاعدة موفق السلطي الأميركية بالأردن، بينها مروحيات متضررة. pic.twitter.com/mNO7PT0fjo

— Ali BKK (@cameliaii32) September 9, 2026

Dozens of expensive aircraft, including large refuelers, have been destroyed by Iran’s ‘retaliation’ throughout Operation Epic Fury as part of its ‘debasifaction’ campaign.

This has led to a broad retreat of US forces from ‘frontline’ Gulf bases, which may actually never be fully reconstituted again, or even rebuilt.

Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump expanded the number of Cabinet officials who can independently exercise emergency powers involving the nation’s energy supplies for the second time in six months.

An executive order issued Sept. 8 gives the interior secretary authority under the Defense Production Act that had previously rested largely with the energy secretary. Trump added the energy secretary alongside the commerce secretary under a similar provision in March.

Before March, the commerce secretary held authority under one provision intended to maximize energy supplies. Trump’s action Tuesday leaves the three officials independently authorized to act on energy-related matters under the Defense Production Act.

The Defense Production Act, created five years after the end of World War II, allows the president to tell private companies to give federal contracts priority over private-sector customers. It also allows the president to provide financial incentives to increase the supply of materials and technologies considered vital to national defense. Congress has reauthorized the law more than 50 times since its enactment in 1950.

The Interior Department oversees federal lands and waters containing significant energy and mineral resources. Its agencies administer onshore oil and gas leasing and production, while the interior secretary approves the five-year schedule for offshore oil and gas lease sales. The department’s energy portfolio also includes coal, critical minerals, geothermal energy, and wind and solar development on public lands.

The new order gives the interior and energy secretaries independent authority to require that certain energy-related contracts receive priority and to allocate energy resources when necessary to support national defense.

The order also establishes a process for resolving disagreements between the two departments. Energy-related disputes between the interior and energy secretaries will be referred to the National Energy Dominance Council. Disputes involving national defense infrastructure or military operations will be referred to the National Energy Dominance Council and the National Security Council while coordinating with the Department of War.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a former North Dakota governor, also chairs the White House National Energy Dominance Council. In March, Burgum went to Venezuela to meet with leader Delcy Rodriguez to discuss investments and expansion of the country’s natural resources.

Nearly six months later, Trump announced a deal with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels from Venezuela’s oil reserves. Trump said the deal was a partnership of private businesses and was brokered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth while working with Rodriguez.

Update(1815ET): While unconfirmed, this would mark a huge escalation of the Houthi entry into what’s been creeping all summer into a regional war:

Yemen’s armed forces targeted Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline; satellite data shows fires at six points along the route that transports crude oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. (IRIB News)

Reports earlier in the day revealed Houthi attacks on southern areas of the kingdom, but made no mention of the Iran-aligned group targeting the further north East-West oil pipeline – which has become vital as an alternative bypass to the contested Strait of Hormuz. Earlier today: Houthis Seize Yemeni Port Of Mocha, Gaining Greater Leverage Over Bab Al Mandab Strait

And now an extremely alarming situation for global energy flows:

If true, this is very serious. The East-West pipeline is Saudi Arabia’s critical bypass around the Strait of Hormuz. https://t.co/km3QMx0YRw

— OilPrice.com (@OilandEnergy) September 10, 2026

Analysts remain cautious about speaking in certainties at this early point…

“I want to stress that there is NOT YET concrete evidence to support that the Saudi East-West Pipeline has been hit. There is satellite imagery from multiple satellites that clearly indicate SOMETHING is going on, but there is not yet confirmation that it ACTUALLY has significant/catastrophic damage.”

It’s too early to make any hard claims, but the Copernicus browser Sentinel 3 shows a 80km long smoke trail. Larger than routine flaring. pic.twitter.com/enrSDAF7zc

— OilPrice.com (@OilandEnergy) September 10, 2026

Large smoke plumes south of Medina, as Iranian state media is quick to frame it as the result of a significant Houthi attack and escalation against the kingdom…

Satellite imagery captures fumes of smoke rising from Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline following an alleged strike by Yemen’s Armed Forces.

Follow Press TV on Telegram: https://t.co/1ymjeez4mJ pic.twitter.com/wgaiyGG21p

— PressTV Extra (@PresstvExtra) September 10, 2026

Map (via S&P Global Commodity Insights):

*  *  *

Update(1735ET): It looks like that Iranians have fired on more international vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, with the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre within the last couple hours monitoring the below developing situation:

UKMTO says it has received a report of two vessels involved in a security incident 4nm West of Khasab Oman

The master of the vessel reports seeing four unknown projectiles hit two unknown vessels, causing fire on one vessel, and unsure of the status of the second vessel, 6nm north of his position.

Meanwhile…

WTI Crude back to $104

The IRGC taking shots at tankers ‘violating’ Iran’s passage protocol has of late become a nightly and daily reality. As Washington tries to find an offramp, and ratchets the ‘Economic D-day’ sanctions, this is Tehran squeezing back and saying not so fast, seeking to impose a deep political and economic cost on the Trump administration.

There could also be another ‘military answer’ on Iran from the US side as soon as tonight. The Pentagon had launched sporadic attacks on southern Iran earlier this week. But the US also seems hesitant and fearful over the prospect of runway escalation and inescapable quagmire.  

*  *  *

Brent crude futures traded above $102 a barrel Thursday morning after Iran threatened to intensify attacks, renewing concerns over tanker flows through the Hormuz maritime chokepoint. The supply risk extends well beyond crude to mounting shortages of refined products, particularly diesel, as the US diesel crack spread trades around $102 a barrel.

President Trump’s indication yesterday that the conflict could continue beyond November’s midterm elections suggests limited near-term fuel pump relief for working-class folks, with the US national gasoline average above the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon threshold and diesel at a record high. Trump also announced overnight a proposal for a $5,000 “Trump dividend” check for every American adult if Republicans retain control of both chambers of Congress.

Following Goldman, HSBC raised its 2026 average Brent crude forecast to $90 a barrel from $80, citing continued disruptions to shipping through the critical Gulf waterway that are expected to keep global oil balances tighter for longer.

With Hormuz flows running at roughly 30% of pre-conflict levels, HSBC analysts see the market adjusting to a prolonged period of depressed tanker transit through the chokepoint. That outlook suggests sustained supply constraints through year-end.

“The key indicator to watch is whether this will put an end to the heavy shuttling of oil through the Strait of Hormuz,” said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst at Global Risk Management in Copenhagen. “It may not come to a complete halt, but combined with the more aggressive Houthis in the Red Sea and higher Chinese crude oil imports, the global oil market balance appears to be deteriorating again.”

Earlier this week, Vitol Group CEO Russell Hardy said about 10 million barrels a day have been crossing the waterway, roughly half of pre-war levels. He added that an exact figure is hard to quantify and that volumes aren’t guaranteed daily.

Read:

• “It’s Pretty Tight”: Vitol Chief Warns Of Global Fuel Squeeze As Refineries Max Out, Leaving Little Room For More Chaos

Goldman commodities strategist Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby sharply revised tanker-flow estimates through the Hormuz chokepoint to between 15 million and 16 million barrels per day, roughly two-thirds of pre-war levels. That’s mainly because the market is not counting ships that turn off their automatic identification systems to avoid detection by Iran.

Goldman’s Daan Struyven also noted one upside scenario this week that could push Brent to $120 if the conflict persists…

“The fundamental picture for products remains bullish with global inventories and reserves deteriorating,” said Darrell Fletcher, managing director for commodities at Bannockburn Capital Markets. Before ‘Operation Epic Furry’, about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed through Hormuz to global customers, mainly in Asia. The ongoing disruptions have sent NatGas prices in Europe above 81 euros on Thursday. 

Beyond energy, a broad-based commodity rally has pushed agricultural products and metals higher, sending the Bloomberg Commodity Index to levels last seen in 2012. HSBC analysts spot a commodities cycle developing into a “super squeeze,” which suggests the move could be sustained.

Polymarket’s “Brazil Presidential Election” market, with nearly $150 million in trading volume, now favors right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro over leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of October’s election. The shift follows polling data released earlier this week showing Bolsonaro pulling ahead in a hypothetical runoff, although the candidates remain statistically tied within the margin of error.

Bolsonaro took the lead on Polymarket around 8:20 a.m. ET, and by early Thursday afternoon, he stood at around 52.8% versus Lula’s 44%.

On Tuesday, the BTG Pactual/Nexus survey showed that Bolsonaro had edged ahead of Lula for the first time. This comes as a deepening Supreme Court scandal strengthens the conservative challenger’s campaign.

As the gap between Bolsonaro and Lula narrowed in recent weeks and the race became a toss-up, we pointed out an “explosive surge” in call open interest in the iShares MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ).

And someone appears to be making a huge bet on just that: explosive surge in EWZ call OI https://t.co/nqFaGgms4R pic.twitter.com/uen9bXmqBw

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 8, 2026

On Thursday, Citi chief Latin America economist Ernesto Revilla told clients that Latin America is “poised for take-off,” as a right-wing political shift across the continent, a weaker dollar, firm commodity prices, and global supply-chain realignment were producing tailwinds for the region.

Also this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio kicked off his South America tour on Tuesday, first meeting with Trump-backed Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella to strengthen security and economic ties as several countries in the region shift toward right-wing governments. 

A Bolsonaro victory would cement South America’s broader shift from unhinged left-wing regimes toward the common-sense right.

Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration is proposing to change how the U.S. Census is conducted by excluding illegal immigrants from the population totals that are used to determine political representation.

The Census Bureau posted a proposed rule on Wednesday that said it also wants to prohibit the inclusion of questions about race and ethnicity or sexual orientation on the census in “short-form questionnaire or any questionnaire used for purposes of the enumeration.”

The proposed rule said that questions about race and sexual orientation have a “sensitive” nature and could impede responses, and removing them could lead to a higher rate of participation.

The proposed rule cites the definition of “usual residence” as a reason to exclude illegal immigrants.

It states, “Given the historical meaning of ‘usual residence’ as tied to allegiance, durable permission from the sovereign to settle within the United States, and establishment of domicile within the United States, the Census Bureau proposes to include lawful permanent residents within the apportionment base, while excluding from the apportionment base illegal aliens and aliens whose legal status is less durable and indefinite in length than lawful permanent resident status.”

The proposal would extend beyond unauthorized immigrants. It would also exclude foreign citizens whose legal status is “less durable and indefinite in length” than lawful permanent resident status.

The Census Bureau said it is considering using its “enormously broad access” to administrative records to determine an individual’s legal status.

The proposed restrictions on demographic questions would apply to the census conducted every 10 years, but not to the American Community Survey or other Census Bureau surveys.

The Census determines how the 435 seats in the House are divided among states, affects Electoral College representation, and the distribution of federal funding.

Excluding undocumented immigrants could reduce the representation of states with large immigrant populations, such as New York and California.

New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office said it was exploring legal options over the proposed changes in a post on X on Wednesday.

“The Constitution is clear. Every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted in the Census,” James’s office stated.

“We stopped the Trump administration’s Census attacks in 2020, and we’re exploring our legal options to fight back again.”

The White House didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Trump directed the Commerce Department to develop a plan for the U.S. Census that excluded undocumented immigrants in August 2025.

Trump said the count should use modern data, including information from the 2024 election, but did not specify whether he wanted an additional Census before 2030 or a change applying to future counts.