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Welcome to The Morning Sixpack, where today’s news includes a CIA director quietly visiting Moscow, inflation refusing to behave, Meta writing an enormous check, legal immigrants losing their appointments, Saudi Arabia eyeing nuclear power, and a U.S.-Canada trade war making it more expensive to take a dump. Wednesday clearly woke up and chose complications.
Inflation is still running hotter than the Federal Reserve wants, with headline PCE reaching 3.7% annually in July and core inflation at 3.3%. The monthly numbers weren’t disastrous, but the Fed’s target remains 2%, services prices are still climbing, and Treasury yields have been rising. Markets see relatively low odds of a September rate move, putting even more attention on Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech. Inflation isn’t roaring, but it certainly hasn’t received the eviction notice.
Source: CNBC
CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a rare trip to Moscow for talks with Russian intelligence officials—and Washington reportedly asked Ukraine to temporarily avoid striking Moscow, St. Petersburg and some northern Russian regions while the delegation was there. Trump called the trip “sort of semi-routine,” while the Kremlin described U.S.-Russia relations as being in a “profound crisis.” Nobody has disclosed what Ratcliffe discussed, but possibilities range from Ukraine to Russia’s relationship with Iran and the protection of American personnel in the Middle East. “Semi-routine” is apparently doing classified work now.
Source: Associated Press
Meta has agreed to pay up to $16.7 billion to settle a major case over alleged harms to young social-media users, while also accepting substantial restrictions on how teens use Facebook and Instagram. Teen accounts will face default two-hour limits, overnight restrictions, muted school-hour notifications and stronger parental controls, pending court approval. About $12.7 billion of the settlement is guaranteed, with the rest tied partly to whether competitors adopt comparable safeguards. Nothing focuses the product-design department quite like billions of dollars and an independent auditor.
Source: WIRED
The Trump administration has paused immigrant visa appointments around the world while State Department personnel undergo new screening training. This applies to immigrant visa appointments—not every U.S. visa—but applicants with scheduled interviews are reportedly being told they’ll receive new dates later. The pause comes just days after a federal judge struck down an administration policy suspending immigrant visa issuance for applicants from 75 countries. Following the legal immigration process apparently now includes the exciting new step of waiting to find out when you can continue following the legal immigration process.
Source: Reuters
Trump has sent a landmark 30-year civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia to Congress, potentially opening the door to uranium enrichment on Saudi soil. The deal calls for a two-year study of whether an American-built enrichment facility makes commercial sense, but Trump has attached another significant condition: Saudi Arabia must normalize relations with Israel and join the Abraham Accords. That condition reportedly came after the nuclear agreement had already been negotiated and signed. Nuclear technology, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Congress—finally, a geopolitical puzzle with enough pieces.
Source: The Wall Street Journal (free)
And the U.S.-Canada trade war has reached the bathroom, with toilet paper among the products caught in an escalating tariff fight. Canada plans retaliatory tariffs on nearly 900 American goods beginning September 8, while American manufacturers depend heavily on Canadian raw materials for paper products. Toss in tariffs affecting dairy, seafood, liquor, cars and auto parts, and this trade dispute is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to avoid. And yes, after the Taylor Farms explosive-diarrhea episode, it just got even more expensive to take a dump. That’s not economic policy—that’s adding insult to intestinal injury.
Source: The Guardian
That’s your Morning Sixpack: persistent inflation, clandestine conversations in Moscow, Meta’s multibillion-dollar reckoning, immigration bottlenecks, nuclear diplomacy, and tariffed toilet paper. Six stories, one morning, and somehow the bathroom story still managed to provide the cleanest metaphor for international trade policy.
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