Pimp Trump's Arab Gulf Girls Distraught as They Face "No-Client" Prospects

‘Take the money and run’: Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke on why the UAE quit OPEC
Shawn Tully
Updated Wed, April 29, 2026 


A pipeline in the UAE. The country announced it would be leaving OPEC in a surprise move.(KARIM SAHIB—AFP/Getty Images)

The decision was shocking. But the announcement April 28 that the United Arab Emirates was leaving OPEC caps years of tension where the desert state chafed under the cartel’s quotas, and recently, encountered severe strain in its relationship with Saudi Arabia, the group’s most potent force by far. Though it had felt strains before, it was the war in Iran that pushed the UAE over the edge. “The war suddenly made job one for the UAE: ‘Take the money and run,’” says Steve H. Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University. “First, OPEC stood partially in the way. Now, the Iran war poses a much bigger danger for a long time to come.”

The UAE didn’t mention the Gulf conflict in its public announcement. Its press release stated: “The decision reflects the UAE’s long-term strategic and economic vision and evolving energy profile, including accelerated investment in domestic energy production.” Included was a confirmation that the UAE seeks to lift production beyond OPEC strictures—framed by understatement apparently designed to avoid freaking out the oil market. The UAE pledged to bring “additional production to the market in a gradual and measured manner, aligned with demand and market conditions.”

One observer the move didn’t surprise was Hanke, who served on the UAE’s Financial Advisory Council from 2008 to 2014. Years earlier, he had developed an economic model that addressed how fast an oil-rich nation should produce assuming different rates of decline in the “real,” or inflation-adjusted, price of crude. That projection specified the rising “discount rates” at which the reserves lost value the longer they stayed in the ground. The faster the projected decline in the dollars a barrel fetched on the world market, the quicker a nation should pump to maximize its profits. Hanke shared his work with the UAE’s economic leaders. “The system showing those optimal pumping rates made sense to them,” says Hanke. “If you think future prices are going higher, you slow down and wait to produce. If you think they’re going lower, you ramp up fast.”

Starting around 2021, the UAE began pushing hard for a much higher share of OPEC’s output. For Hanke, the reason was obvious: Its Abu Dhabi–based government was increasingly concerned about the rise in green energy that threatened a long-running slide in “real” fossil fuel prices. In fact, sustainable technologies looked so promising to the UAE that it invested heavily in projects ranging from solar farms to sustainable aircraft fuel to low-emission hydrogen. “That led to the strategy of ‘pump like hell today,’” says Hanke. In that vein, the UAE greatly accelerated its oil investments, and sought to put all that new capacity to work by pressing OPEC to lift its limit around 50% to roughly 5 million barrels per day. Those demands soured its relations with Saudi Arabia, and the two nations also clashed in their support of warring sides in both Yemen and Sudan. The UAE’s tacit recognition of Somaliland, and its role in moving Israel towards being the first nation to officially take that stance, have further antagonized the Saudis.

The haymaker, however, landed when fellow OPEC member Iran unleashed its drones and missiles on UAE’s oil and gas complex, an offensive that seemed unimaginable before the U.S.-Israeli attacks—even though the Emirates had antagonized Iran by courting both nations, and joining the Abraham Accords in 2020. Iran inflicted severe damage on at least five major UAE facilities, including a drone strike that ignited fires at Ruwais, one of the world’s largest refineries, and another at the key Port of Fujairah oil export hub. While the UAE still manages significant shipments via its pipeline to the Gulf of Oman, the war has crippled its freedom for moving crude and gas from its wells to world markets.

“The problem’s gone from a long-term decline in the real price, to the possibility that in the future, they won’t be able to sell all, or can only sell much less, because Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, or periodically takes out part of its infrastructure,” says Hanke. The upshot: The UAE’s discount rate soared overnight. The new math dictates that the “present value” of oil produced in the future will be much lower than before the war. In other words, any opportunity to go, go like hell. “The UAE now has a big incentive to tilt oil production towards the present and away from the future,” says Hanke. Leaving OPEC and its quotas opens that door. This war is full of unforeseen consequences. None bigger than the bombshell on April 28 that this OPEC stalwart for nearly 60 years is bolting.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Trump Needs China's Approval to Rebuild Squandered US Ammo Stocks

America shot its arsenal empty in 2 wars. Now it needs Beijing’s permission to reload
Steve H. Hanke, Jeffrey Weng
Updated Thu, April 30, 2026


Pete Hegseth, US secretary of defense, during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. The hearing is set to examine the Department of Defense 2027 budget request.(Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Wednesday, the Trump administration finally let the cat out of the bag that Operation Epic Fury, America’s war on Iran, has burned through $25 billion so far. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The White House has already requested a supplemental budget of $200 billion for its war on Iran.

The inventory math is brutal. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) finds that in Iran alone, the United States burned through 45% of its Precision Strike Missile stockpile, half of its THAAD interceptors, nearly half of its Patriot PAC-3 inventory, roughly 30% of its Tomahawks, and more than 20% of its long-range JASSMs.

That is just one war. Add Ukraine, where, since 2022, the United States has shipped roughly one-third of its Javelin inventory, one-quarter of its Stinger stockpile, more than two million 155mm artillery rounds, and thousands of GMLRS rockets. The combined drain is what the Pentagon’s own internal assessments now describe as a “near-term risk” of running out of ammunition.

The fact that the weapons cupboard is bare is one thing. What is rarely reported is the fact that [America's weapons cupboard] will not be restocked without Beijing’s approval.

Four Weapons, Four Periodic-Table Problems

Leave Ukraine aside. Forget the Javelins, the Stingers, the GMLRS rockets, and the two million artillery rounds that were used in Ukraine. Setting Ukraine aside, consider four weapons that the United States just burned through in Iran, and the critical material required for each — which flows almost exclusively through China.

Tomahawk cruise missile. The United States burned through over 1,000 Tomahawks in Iran — ten years’ worth of production. Each one’s fin actuators run on samarium-cobalt magnets. China mines and refines 99% of the world’s samarium and placed it under export licensing on April 4, 2025. To rebuild the inventory, Raytheon must turn to Beijing for samarium.

Patriot PAC-3 interceptor. The seeker uses samarium-cobalt (SmCo) to slew its guidance head; the radar’s traveling-wave tubes use SmCo to focus the microwave beam; yttrium-iron-garnet phase shifters tune the array. Replenishing the 1,200-plus interceptors expended in Iran requires roughly 1.2 to 2.4 tons of high-temperature SmCo, plus yttrium oxide. Between 2020 and 2023, China supplied 93% of U.S. yttrium imports.

JASSM-ER stealth cruise missile. The fin servos and seeker run on neodymium-iron-boron magnets (NdFB) doped with dysprosium and terbium for thermal stability. Strip out the heavy rare earths, and the magnet demagnetizes in flight. Roughly 1,100 missiles expended translates to between 1.5 and 3 tons of NdFeB feedstock. China refines the vast majority of the world’s dysprosium and terbium.

F-35 Lightning II. For a decade, the Department of Defense itself has repeated that each F-35 contains 920 pounds of rare earths. The strategically critical content is the high-temperature SmCo and dysprosium-doped NdFeB in the engine actuators, electric drives, and radar. These are precisely the materials Beijing has placed under license.

Across these four weapon systems, the back-of-the-envelope replenishment requirement is between five and ten metric tons of finished defense-grade rare earth magnets, more than 95% of which will arrive from the People’s Republic of China.

Beijing’s Hand

China holds all the cards and knows how to play them. Gallium and germanium controls came in August 2023. Antimony controls came in August 2024, with a full ban of shipments to the United States in December 2024. As a result, antimony prices surged by 134%. Tungsten restrictions were imposed in February 2025; the price skyrocketed by over 557% per metric ton. Then MOFCOM Announcement No. 18 of April 4, 2025, placed seven medium and heavy rare earths under discretionary licensing. Chinese rare-earth magnet exports were curtailed by 74% the following month. In October 2025, Beijing extended the regime extraterritorially to any product, anywhere in the world, containing as little as 0.1% of Chinese-origin rare earths.

Trump in Beijing

This brings us to May 14, 2026, when President Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. Not surprisingly, critical materials sit at the top of the meeting’s agenda. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer stated in early April that the goal of the meeting is “to ensure we can continue to get rare earths from the Chinese.”

There is only one thing worse than being unprepared for the war you started. It is being unprepared for the next one, because your adversary controls the periodic table.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Who? What? When? I don't Know...An Ignorant and Senile President....

... please wake me up when it's time for bed, says Dozy Don. I haven't heard. Don't ask me, I only work in this Out House. What is this about? Supreme Court decisions, War Powers Act, .... big decisions engaging the country, and yet the narcissistic moron is entirely focused on himself, on making money and building vanity reminders of his legacy as the Dumbest President in US history.

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‘When did it come out?’ Trump remains disengaged as events unfold around him
Steve Benen
Thu, April 30, 2026


President Donald Trump[sleeping] in the Oval Office of the White House on April 23, 2026.(Will Oliver / EPA / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

For proponents of voting rights and racially diverse democracy, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais was a brutal gut punch. University of California at Los Angeles law professor Richard Hasen wrote in a Slate analysis that the decision, written by Republican-appointed justices, “will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century.”

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent that the ruling renders Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “all but a dead letter” and that the consequences “are likely to be far-reaching and grave.” She added that in states “where that law continues to matter — the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting — minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”

With this in mind, it’s easy to imagine Donald Trump reacting to the ruling with delight, not just because of his record of radical animus, but also because the Republican-appointed justices just delivered a ruling that will almost certainly benefit the president’s party.

And yet, when a reporter asked Trump about the high court’s decision several hours after its release, he appeared to have absolutely no idea what had happened.

“Tell me, when did the ruling come out?” the president asked, adding that he’d “been with contractors” talking about his ballroom vanity project. After talking about the ballroom initiative for a bit — once he gets started on the subject, it’s generally tough for him to stop — he eventually told the press corps, “Tell me about what happened.”

No one asked the obvious follow-up question: Shouldn’t he know what happened?

A similar exchange unfolded a week earlier, when a reporter asked whether the president could confirm recent reporting about his administration taking steps to send 1,100 Afghans to the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I don’t know,” he replied.

The week before that, amid reports that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had met with administration officials for an important closed-door discussion, a reporter asked Trump whether Anthropic did, in fact, have a meeting at the White House.

“Who?” he replied, apparently confused. When the reporter repeated the question, he again said, “I have no idea.”

The frequency with which this comes up is an underappreciated element of the Republican’s presidency.

At a White House Cabinet meeting in November, for example, whenever Trump was asked a question of any substance, he’d ask someone else to answer. The same week, the president was pressed to defend his scandalous pardon for Changpeng Zhao, founder of the crypto exchange Binance, who helped finance the president’s stablecoin and put money in the Trump family’s pockets.

“I don’t know who he is,” he replied.

This wasn’t the first time. In March, after Trump pardoned one of his donors, he was pressed for an explanation. He again appeared clueless: “They” told him that the criminal had been treated unfairly, which was enough for him to sign a pardon.

The frequency with which this comes up is unsettling. Days earlier, Trump appeared lost when asked about developments in Israel. Two weeks before that, when asked about a possible suspension of habeas corpus, the president initially thought that was a reference to a person [- The idiot thought that Habeas Corpus is the name of some dude -]  before telling a reporter, “Oh, I don’t know.”

Around the same time, Trump was forced to reverse course after he discovered that he had cut off counterterrorism funds to New York City days earlier.

Last September, as part of a half-hearted last-minute attempt to prevent a government shutdown, Trump welcomed congressional leaders to the White House for a meeting. After it failed to produce results, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that the president was apparently “not aware” of the key elements of the Democratic position.

A month earlier, Trump said he didn’t “know anything about” a failed top-secret mission in North Korea in 2019 that he reportedly authorized. At a White House event in July, a reporter noted the Trump administration had paused a shipment of military aid intended for Ukraine a week earlier. Asked who approved this, the president replied, “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

In May, during a Q&A with a White House press pool, Trump was asked about his administration’s new student visa policy, and he responded in a way that suggested he had no idea what the reporter was talking about.

Weeks earlier, less than 24 hours after he nominated Dr. Casey Means to serve as the nation’s next surgeon general, the president conceded that he didn’t know Means. The day before that, amid reports that the administration was planning to expand its deportations agenda to Libya, Trump was pressed on the policy. “I don’t know,” he responded.

The same week, Trump appeared on “Meet the Press,” and when NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked whether everyone in the United States is entitled to due process, the president replied, “I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.” When Welker reminded her guest about the Fifth Amendment, Trump again said, “I don’t know.”

As part of the same exchange, Welker went on to ask, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Once again, Trump answered, “I don’t know.”

Around the same time, fielding questions in the Oval Office, Trump was asked whether he agreed with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s comments about possible tariff exemptions for certain family consumer goods. “I don’t know, I’ll think about it,” the president said. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Last spring, Trump was asked about four U.S. soldiers who had gone missing during a NATO training exercise in Lithuania, and the president was clueless. Asked about the apparent assassination of a Russian general, Trump again had no idea what the reporter was talking about.

When the Republican was asked about the Signal group chat scandal and whether he believed classified information was shared, he replied, “I don’t know. I’m not sure, you have to ask the various people involved.”

No one appeared to be trying to trip up the president with unexpected inquiries into obscure topics. In all of these instances, Trump should have been able to respond to the questions with substantive responses. But he didn’t. Instead, the Republican effectively said, over and over again, “Don’t look at me; I just work here.”

Most objective observers would probably agree that if Joe Biden had repeatedly said “I don’t know” in response to simple questions about his own administration, it would have been front-page news — and the Democrat’s responses would have played on a loop for hours on end in conservative media.

Similarly, Trump has personally invested considerable time and energy in accusing Biden of having been a doddering old “autopen” president who was unaware of events unfolding around him. Given the frequency with which President Bystander clings to “I don’t know” responses, he should probably consider a new line of attack.

Finally, let’s not forget that Trump’s authoritarian tendencies are rooted, at least in part, in the idea that governmental power must be concentrated in the president’s hands, to be executed as he sees fit.

It makes Trump’s apparent cluelessness that much more alarming. As The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie noted in a column late last year, “There is a presidency at work in Washington, but it is not clear that there is a president at work in the Oval Office.”

Trump Weasels Out of Iran War by Suddenly Pretending to Obey the Law

The two top morons of the US administration, the pedophile Epstein's friend Donald Dumb and his thuggish and virile minion Pete Hegseth, have decided to suddenly pretend to obey the laws of the country by claiming that they have to terminate their losing losing war with Iran because they had only 60 days to win it without congressional approval. 

Two days ago, the Great American Moron Donald Dumb had declared that he is under no pressure whatsoever to decide what to do with Iran and that his decisions have nothing to do with the November midterms , which virtually everyone thinks will be a huge defeat for him.

As someone who constantly broke the laws and refused to abide by decisions of the courts, it was surprising to hear him and Hegseth say they must terminate the war with Iran because they want to abide by the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Act that says he needs congressional approval after that deadline.

This is nothing by a giant Trump TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) dissimulated behind a sudden respect for the laws and Congress. The Great Moron and his Sancho Panza Hegseth sidekick already foresee a defeat by an anti-war majority in Congress, should they request an extension of that deadline. Second, the midterm campaigns are already in full swing, and by suddenly terminating the war with Iran they are hoping that the American people would have forgotten about the war by November.

This also means that - having NOT won (i.e. have lost) the war with Iran (no regime change, no concessions on uranium enrichment, a continued blockade of Hormuz...) - the original inciter for the war, Benjamin Netanyahu, who prodded the bovine Trump with a cattle prod and bamboozled him into a war that all past US presidents have declined to prosecute for the past 30 years, might have to continue on his own with some support from the US.

This trick may pass in the deserted brains of some in the MAGA herd, but it won't pass with the vast majority of the American people. Americans have already tired of the lies and false campaign promises, they have tired of wasting billions on an unnecessary war while their cost of living has skyrocketed since the Great Moron was elected on promises of "no foreign wars" and lower grocery prices. 

So, the Trump administration is now suddenly arguing that the war in Iran has already ended because of the ceasefire that began in early April, an interpretation that would allow the White House to avoid the need to seek congressional approval. The Defense Secretary of War, the drunkard warrior Pete Hegseth, told the Senate last Thursday that the ceasefire effectively paused the war. Under that rationale, the administration has not yet met the requirement mandated by a 1973 law to seek formal approval from Congress for military action that extends beyond 60 days.

While the ceasefire has since been extended, Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. Navy is maintaining a blockade to prevent Iran's oil tankers from getting out to sea. The War Powers Act that limits a president’s military powers, and Donald Dumb had until today Friday to seek congressional authorization or cease fighting.

“That deadline is not a suggestion; it is a requirement,” said Republican MAGA Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. She unexpectedly broke rank with the Great Moron by voting to end military action in Iran since Congress hadn’t given its approval. Since the Great Moron was pushed by Netanyahu into war without a forethought, Collins clarified that “further military action against Iran must have a clear mission, achievable goals, and a defined strategy for bringing the conflict to a close."

Using byzantine language to camouflage the American defeat in this war, some of Donald Dumb's right-wing extremist "intellectuals" are saying that the new phase would be a mission of self-defense focused on reopening the Hormuz strait while reserving the right to offensive action in support of restoring freedom of navigation.

Menanwhile, the Jesus-saved-me drunkard and fornicating weasel Hegseth testified in the Senate that the administration understands that the 60-day clock was on pause while the two countries were in a ceasefire. Democrats who queried him about the timeline are now saying that Hegseth “advanced a very novel argument... never heard before” and “certainly has no legal support.” One interpretation is that by claiming a "pause", the administration reserves the remaining balance of the 60 days deadline for resuming the war and still remain bound by the that deadline. In  other words, this asinine bunch of idiots want to wage the war like an American "football" (a distorted version of rugby misnamed by the dumb Americans) game where the clock is constantly paused and restarted, and the game is played in 4-second installments that make the boring game lasts hours and hours.

“To be very, very clear and unambiguous, nothing in the text or design of the War Powers Resolution suggests that the 60-day clock can be paused or terminated,” a commentator said. Other presidents have argued that the military action they’ve taken was not intense enough or was too intermittent to qualify under the War Powers Resolution. But Trump’s war in Iran would certainly not be such a case, and lawmakers need to push back against the administration on that kind of argument.