United States
What United States is up to now
New 09-06: the envoys reached Kyiv and left saying Moscow yielded "significant progress" and "new ideas." Witkoff and Kushner arrived by train from Rzeszów on Sunday — Russian strikes ruled out a direct flight — and walked with Zelensky to St Sophia's Square for this administration's first envoy visit to Ukraine's capital, a day after roughly three hours with Putin; by afternoon both said a return to trilateral US-Ukraine-Russia talks should be "announced shortly," British, French and German security advisers had joined a further round, and Zelensky said territory is a leaders-level question and the war looks set to run into winter. On Iran the same Sunday, Energy Secretary Wright said on ABC that "there may not be a nuclear agreement" and the answer "may be simply destroying their capabilities," and Bessent put Iran's unsold floating crude at about 30 million barrels. The Kremlin's three-day pause on Kyiv strikes held for the city on its first night while nine were killed elsewhere in Ukraine, and an IAEA-brokered local ceasefire took effect at the Zaporizhzhia plant so its last power line can be repaired. In the Gulf, Iran's parliament speaker answered Saturday's tanker strikes by declaring the "era of proportionate responses" over. At home, CNBC's tally puts the president, vice president, Treasury secretary and Navarro all publicly against a September hike in one week, ten days out. Japan's trade minister said the $550bn investment pact is being re-pointed at AI and chips. New 09-05: two theatres moved on a Saturday. The envoys went — Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Moscow for talks with Putin, with Kyiv scheduled for Sunday 09-06 as this administration's first visit there, and the Kremlin announced a three-day pause on strikes on Kyiv from midnight tied to that leg; overnight, before the pause, Russia hit Kyiv's own airports after rejecting Ukraine's ceasefire offer. In the Gulf, the IRGC fired ballistic missiles at a US carrier and a destroyer, both evaded, and CENTCOM answered by disabling two IRGC crude carriers off Kharg Island and Jask and destroying a third in the Gulf of Oman — the first direct Iranian missile attack on US warships at sea in this war, answered on the oil-export infrastructure rather than on Iranian territory. Neither is a flash; both are escalations inside running wars. Trump's 09-04 rate demand and the Warsh-sparing tone below stand. New 09-04: the executive applied public pressure to the Fed within minutes of a data release that argued the other way. At 9:56am ET, moments after August payrolls came in at +162,000 against a consensus near 50,000 with June and July revised up a combined 55,000, Trump posted on Truth Social demanding cuts — "The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart - BE PATRIOTS for a change" — and attached a trade threat: "LOWER THE RATE OR I'LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT." Two things are worth holding. The demand runs directly against the print, which pushed September-hike odds from ~54.6% to above 60%. And the tone toward Chair Kevin Warsh is notably softer than the treatment Powell received — Warsh is named approvingly ("its great new leader") and not attacked personally, a week after he told Jackson Hole the Fed had "work to do" on above-target inflation. The pressure channel is live; the personal-attack channel, so far, is not. New 08-31: declared a NATIONAL EMERGENCY over foreign-produced grid equipment. Executive Order 14421, signed 08-26 and published in today's Federal Register, invokes IEEPA and the National Emergencies Act to prohibit acquisition, import, transfer or installation of bulk-power system electric equipment tied to a "Covered Foreign Entity" — scope covering generation turbines, large and backup generators, substation transformers, grid-connected inverters, battery energy storage, HV circuit breakers and industrial control systems, plus associated software, firmware and remote-access capability. Sec. 2(b) reaches equipment ALREADY INSTALLED, up to replacement or removal. No country or company is named: Sec. 3(b) leaves designation to implementing rules due within 120 days (2026-12-24), with recommended FAR revisions favouring US-manufactured energy infrastructure due at 180 days (2027-02-22). The order's own recitals name "the rapid growth of advanced manufacturing, data centers, artificial intelligence, and defense production" as why the threat sharpened — the state naming the AI buildout as its reason for an industrial-policy action. New 08-28, three arms moving the same day. MONETARY: Fed chair Kevin Warsh gave his first Jackson Hole keynote, "In Our Time," on his hundredth day — refusing a reaction function, arguing forward guidance "has overstayed its welcome," reaffirming a firm 2% PCE target with "average inflation" absent entirely, putting 12-month PCE at 3.7% and six-month at 4.1%, and spending a section on AI as "potentially a new factor of production" with annualised token sales for the two leading labs above $100bn, up 500%+ (attributed to reports, not Fed data). He said nothing about Fed independence, the administration, buybacks or the long end — checked directly against the released text. The market read it hawkishly: the curve rose with the five- year up ~9bp and the thirty-year up ~2bp, dollar +0.56%, gold -3.28%, VIX unmoved — a rate-path repricing, not a fiscal scare — on the same day Michigan year-ahead inflation expectations FELL to 4.0% from 4.2%. FINANCIAL WARFARE: Treasury designated Bank Melli's Dubai branch manager and a Hong Kong shell, and cut the UAE branch of Egypt's Banque Misr off from US financial institutions, in day four of "Operation Economic Outcast," launched 08-24 under an "Economic D-Day" framing with Bessent's remarks 08-26. EXPORT CONTROL: drafting a rule to close the cloud-rental path — Chinese firms' REMOTE access to US chips — reportedly shareable with industry as soon as September; no rule text exists and the report is single- outlet. Also 08-27: lost decisively in court over blacklisting Anthropic, a judge finding the designation was retaliation for criticism of the administration. CENTCOM declared the Strait of Hormuz open while ~24 tankers transited against a pre-war norm of 120-130.
as of 2026-09-06
The metrics
- Posture high
- expanding 2 src →
- Capital · available high
- ~$254B FX reserves (Aug-2025) — THIN for its size; the true liquidity is unlimited USD/Treasury issuance (dollar is the reserve currency), not a reserve stockpile 1 src →
- Capital · operating high
- ~$10.9T annual federal outlays / ~$8.7T revenue (2024) 1 src →
- Capital · deployed high
- ~$36.4T national debt (Mar-2025); ~$39.28T per Jun-2026 update — $29T held by public + $7.4T intragovernmental 1 src →
- Capital · in high
- ~$8.7T tax revenue (2024, 29.9% of GDP) 1 src →
- Capital · out high
- ~$10.9T expenditure (2024); deficit -$2.23T (-7.63% of GDP) 1 src →
- Optionality high
- free — the dollar is the world reserve currency and Treasuries the deepest market, so 123.9%-of-GDP debt is financed at will (issuer of the settlement asset). Only real constraint is … 1 src →
- Gravity high
- ~$32.4T GDP (nominal, IMF 2026) — largest single-state gravity; the state's gravity IS its GDP 1 src →
This week — what changed
- The US government told a Manhattan federal court that training AI models generally makes fair use of copyrighted material — reportedly its first intervention in the wave of AI-training copyright suits. The brief, filed September 1 in the New York Times' and other publishers' case against OpenAI and Microsoft, backs OpenAI's position and carries advisory rather than binding weight. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said "the United States has a strong interest in this court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law," resting the claim on national-security and scientific-advancement grounds; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick separately urged G20 officials on 09-02 to embrace fair use for AI training. This closes an item the 09-03 digest flagged in its own buffer and explicitly left open as "not yet resolved to a citable source" — it is now independently reported. (wire report)
- Trump demanded Fed rate cuts on Truth Social at 9:56am ET, minutes after a jobs report that argued the other way, and paired the demand with a trade threat. The post read "The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart - BE PATRIOTS for a change," adding "High interest rates put the U.S.A. at a very unfair disadvantage, and I won't allow that to happen!" and then "LOWER THE RATE OR I'LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT." The timing is the point: August payrolls at +162,000 with 55,000 of upward revisions had just moved September-hike odds above 60%, so the executive is pushing against the data rather than with it. The second point is the omission — Chair Kevin Warsh is named approvingly, not attacked. Coverage notes Trump "has refrained from excoriating Warsh personally for not [cutting], as he did with Warsh's predecessor Jerome Powell," and this comes a week after Warsh told Jackson Hole the Fed had "work to do" on above-target inflation. The two men are now pulling opposite directions on the same September decision, without the personal-attack channel open. (24/7 Wall St., Washington Times)
- Japan's trade minister Ryosei Akazawa said in Washington on Friday, after meeting Commerce Secretary Lutnick and Trade Representative Greer, that progress is being made on the $550 billion investment vehicle set up under last year's tariff deal, that discussions on artificial intelligence and semiconductors will carry "very significant weight" in the next round of projects, and that the two sides confirmed no additional tariffs will be imposed on Japan beyond that agreement. Two project rounds have been announced so far — $36 billion in US oil, gas and mineral projects including an Ohio gas facility, and $73 billion for a nuclear project across Tennessee and Alabama and gas plants in Pennsylvania and Texas; Akazawa declined to detail a third. The vehicle was the central pillar of the deal that set US levies on Japanese goods at 15%, and its re-pointing toward AI and chips puts sovereign Japanese money into the same buildout this lens tracks through vendor financing and hyperscaler capex. Nine rows of Saturday's buffer carried it, eight tagged to the AI lens by term match; caught by the 09-06 coverage critic's wire backstop. No thread holds a sovereign investment pact — a candidate on the 09-06 digest. (Bloomberg, via Energy Connects, Bloomberg)
- The first Trump-envoy visit to Kyiv, planned for this weekend, is reportedly in doubt. Witkoff and Kushner were due 09-05/06 — a first for this administration on this file. The reporting says Witkoff "got scared" and that Russia would not commit to pausing strikes for the visit. The ninth straight night of strikes is the same fact from the other side. (Kyiv Independent, KSAT/AP)
- US Central Command disabled two IRGC crude carriers off Kharg Island and Jask and destroyed a third in the Gulf of Oman on Saturday, after the IRGC fired ballistic missiles at a US carrier and a destroyer that "successfully evaded" them. The strikes hit "critical components" to render the M/T Downy and M/T Stark 1 inoperable rather than sink them, limiting spill risk, and the unladen M/T Kylo was destroyed after its crew abandoned ship; no casualties either side. Kharg Island handles roughly 90% of Iran's crude exports, and the Downy was hit in its waters — the first US strike on Iranian tanker traffic at the terminal itself rather than in transit. Brent settled Friday at $92.68, +7.6% on the week, its steepest weekly gain in months, with US diesel at a record $5.85/gal; no US session until Tuesday 09-08. (CNN, via KVIA, AP, via KSAT)
- In the week before the Fed's 09-15/16 meeting the president, the vice president, the Treasury secretary and senior counselor Peter Navarro all publicly urged the Fed not to raise rates or to cut them — Navarro calling FOMC members "clowns" on Steve Bannon's show on Friday and a hike "careless," Vance saying "we believe that the Fed should be lowering interest rates," Bessent arguing the Fed does not hike into a supply shock until second- or third-order effects show — on top of Trump's Friday threat to halt trade with surplus countries unless the Fed cuts, the first time he has tied tariffs to Fed policy. CNBC's Saturday tally is the first to frame the four as one campaign, ten days out with the hike priced near 60% and Friday's CPI the last data point; the president has still not criticised Warsh by name, and the precedent CNBC reaches for is May 2019, when Pence, Mnuchin and Kudlow all called for cuts and the Fed cut two months later. The Navarro and Vance remarks were not on Fed Independence Fight until now. (CNBC)
- The IRGC fired ballistic missiles at a US aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer patrolling regional waters on 09-05; both "successfully evaded multiple unprovoked Iranian attacks," per CENTCOM, with no US casualties, and CENTCOM retaliated the same day by permanently disabling the IRGC-linked crude carriers M/T Downy off Kharg Island and M/T Stark 1 near Jask and completely destroying the unladen M/T Kylo (also called Noxen) in the Gulf of Oman after its crew was directed to abandon ship. The strikes hit critical components to render the vessels inoperable rather than sink them, limiting spill risk; no casualties were reported on either side. Iranian state media said "four US missiles struck a tanker" near Kharg Island without evidence. A direct Iranian missile attack on US warships at sea is a different target class from the strikes on bases in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Erbil and from the tanker mining and shipping extortion that have characterised the war so far — and the answer landed in the waters of the terminal that handles roughly 90% of Iran's crude exports. (CNN, via KVIA, AP, via KSAT, Mediaite, quoting CENTCOM)
- Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Moscow on Saturday for talks with Putin and remain scheduled to fly to Kyiv on Sunday 09-06 to meet Zelensky — what would be this administration's first envoy visit to Ukraine's capital — and the Kremlin announced that Putin has ordered no strikes on Kyiv for three days "starting at midnight tonight," tied explicitly to the Americans' meetings in Kyiv. The pause covers the city, not the country, and the nights ahead, not the one just past. Both halves are now dated expectations on the ledger: the visit on 09-06 and the pause through 09-08. By 15:00 ET the envoys had met Putin and neither side had issued a substantive readout; the Kyiv leg stood as scheduled with no new confirmation or slip, and the pause — midnight Moscow is 17:00 ET — had not yet begun, with nothing found reaffirming, conditioning or withdrawing Peskov's line since the morning. (UNN, quoting Peskov, Kyiv Post, CNN)
- Iran's parliament speaker Ghalibaf said on Sunday that the "era of proportionate responses" to US attacks is over and that any further violation would draw a "faster, heavier, and more painful" response, in a speech that also conceded "fundamental challenges" from inflation, unemployment, exchange-rate volatility and disrupted oil trade under sanctions — the first formal Iranian answer to Saturday's CENTCOM strikes on the Downy and Stark 1 off Kharg Island and Jask and the destruction of the Kylo, and a threat framed in terms of scale rather than target. Brent's last settlement is Friday's $92.68, up 7.6% on the week; no US session until Tuesday 09-08; Sunday's futures open at 18:00 ET is the first print. The concession on oil-trade disruption is the lens's read: the terminal-availability question the Saturday interpretation raised is one Tehran's own speaker now describes from the inside. (CNBC, Anadolu)
- Middle East crude exports in August ran 39% below the January-February baseline of 18.5 million barrels a day — a deficit of 7.2 mb/d, down from 12.4 mb/d in May — and Iran's own 1.68 mb/d baseline "may likely remain at zero for the foreseeable future, depending on any agreement," TankerTrackers said on Sunday, while Treasury Secretary Bessent put the Iranian crude still afloat and unsold to China at "probably only about 30 million barrels." The US military says about 90 commercial vessels have been redirected under the blockade; Iranian officials confirm no crude has passed the warships but say up to 90 million barrels moved in July's window and that floating storage outside the line is still being sold to China at a discount. On the policy side of the same Sunday, Energy Secretary Wright told ABC "there may not be a nuclear agreement" and the blockade "will either change their regime or it'll change their regime's policies." For Tuesday's open: a regional deficit that is shrinking as Gulf transits recover under escort, an Iranian zero the administration says it intends to keep, and a threat from Tehran's parliament pointed at the next US strike — the supply picture the Saturday interpretation's first scenario assumes, stated by both sides. (Al Jazeera, carrying TankerTrackers and Bessent, ABC News — Wright)
- Japan's trade minister Ryosei Akazawa, in Washington on Friday after meeting Lutnick and Greer, said progress is being made on the $550 billion investment vehicle under last year's tariff deal and that AI and semiconductor projects will carry "very significant weight" in its next round — two rounds announced so far ($36bn oil, gas and minerals; $73bn nuclear in Tennessee and Alabama plus gas plants in Pennsylvania and Texas), a third not detailed, and a confirmation from both sides that no further tariffs will be imposed on Japan. Dated 09-04 and carried in full in Friday's digest as a late catch; here because it is the weekend's one sovereign-capital statement and it has no thread, which is the candidate below. (Bloomberg, via Energy Connects)
- Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Kyiv on Sunday by train from Rzeszów, Poland, and walked with Zelensky from the railway station to St Sophia's Square — the first visit to Ukraine's capital by this administration's envoys, a day after roughly three hours with Putin in Moscow. Zelensky posted that "the negotiations have begun"; the White House said the sides "discussed substantive plans for next steps, which will be announced in the coming weeks," and a US official called the atmosphere "positive." No substantive readout from either capital of what Moscow offered or Kyiv answered; reported agenda items are Ukraine's winter energy needs under the strike campaign, security guarantees and post-war terms. The ledger item for the visit resolves as a hit on the day; the Saturday Moscow meeting still has no readout beyond Ryabkov's "realities on the ground." (Kyiv Independent, CNN, Ukrinform)
- Steve Witkoff told a Kyiv press conference on Sunday afternoon that "we made significant progress in Moscow — we heard new ideas," and that trilateral US-Ukraine-Russia negotiations, which Zelensky had raised, "we hope will be announced shortly," while Jared Kushner called Saturday's Kremlin meeting "very constructive and substantive" and named a return to the trilateral format as the objective: "we've spoken to both sides, so hopefully very soon." British, French and German national security advisers joined the Ukrainian side for a further round; Kushner said the team is in near-daily contact with Umerov, Budanov, Arakhamia and Kyslytsya. Zelensky said territorial questions can only be settled at the leaders' level and that "at the moment" the war looks likely to continue into winter; asked whether it could end before then, Kushner said "we will try... that doesn't mean we will achieve it." The Kremlin's Ushakov called the Moscow talks "highly useful" and "extremely frank," with the Americans putting forward "a number of ideas on possible routes to a settlement," undisclosed. Outside the two paused capitals, Ukraine's Air Force said it struck the Ryazan refinery overnight and Russia said it hit a Ukrainian cargo vessel in the Black Sea. (Kyiv Post, Al Jazeera, NPR)
- Iran's parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told the assembly on Sunday that the "era of proportionate responses" to US attacks is over and that any further violation of Iran's "interests and security" will draw a "faster, heavier, and more painful" response — the first formal Iranian government statement on Saturday's CENTCOM strikes that disabled the Downy and Stark 1 and destroyed the Kylo. Iranian forces separately claimed an attack on a US unmanned surface vessel near the Strait of Hormuz, unconfirmed by Washington; Tehran called the tanker strikes "illegal and aggressive." Ghalibaf also acknowledged "fundamental challenges" at home — inflation, unemployment, exchange-rate volatility under sanctions and disrupted oil trade — in the same speech. A characterisation of intent from one side; the action, if one comes, is what the thread watches next. (CNBC, Anadolu, Kurdistan24)
- Energy Secretary Chris Wright told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that "there may not be a nuclear agreement" with Iran — "it may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it. An agreement may await a next administration in Iran" — the most explicit statement yet from a cabinet member that the deal the war was launched to obtain may not be sought at all. Wright said the US is "degrading their capacity to develop nuclear weapons and ultimately to deliver them" and that the blockade "will either change their regime or it'll change their regime's policies"; Bessent, on Fox the same morning, put Iran's unsold floating crude at "probably only about 30 million barrels." The IRGC's Sunday statement said the "aggressor US must know that it has no way but to leave the region," claimed a hit on a US sea drone near Hormuz, and called Washington's acknowledgement of Saturday's missile launches "live evidence of the enemy's strategic defeat"; the foreign ministry called the tanker strikes a "war crime," and the economy ministry stood up an "economic war headquarters." Statements of position on both sides, with the Gulf's first price after all of them still Tuesday's open. (ABC News, Al Jazeera — Wright, Al Jazeera — IRGC and Bessent)
Projects & threads
No live threads tagged to this actor this week.