LARRY KUDLOW: Trump’s Secret Sauce

High drama today as President Trump called off the Iranian bombing and announced that a deal with Iran is imminent from his Truth Social posting that “Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved.” That’s America, Israel, Iran and all of the Gulf states involved in the war.

The president spoke about this today at the White House: “The Strait will officially open as soon as we sign, which could be soon. Very soon, maybe over the weekend in Europe.”

Stock markets soared; oil prices fell. Mr. Trump also noted on his Truth Social that “the Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized.” 

And my great hope is that no money is given to Iran for a long time, until they prove that their behavior is changing. And frankly, while I applaud President Trump’s diplomatic endeavors — such as negotiating with bombs — I have nothing but skepticism about Iran following through on their promises.

Just yesterday, the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog blasted Iran for failing to allow inspection and verification of their weapons and their weapons-grade uranium. That’s an old story. 

And Mr. Trump, in whatever the deal turns out to be, is surely going to want complete denuclearization, some kind of end to their enriched uranium, as well as reopening the strait toll free and an end to Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism in Israel and throughout the Middle East.

As President Reagan always said, trust but verify. And as both Reagan and Mr. Trump believe, peace through strength.

Meanwhile, one of the really neat developing stories, regardless of any Iranian deal, is Mr. Trump’s secret supply of oil tankers going through presumably the Oman Channel of the Hormuz Strait.

As Mr. Trump said yesterday and has corroborated by a number of oil watchdogs, some 200 ships transited the strait for a total of about 100 million barrels of oil over the past month. 

That comes to about 3 million barrels per day. Recall that world oil supply and demand intersect at about 100 million barrels per day.

And the prior closing of the Strait took about 20 percent, or about 20 million barrels per day, off the market. So the supply shortages drove oil prices way up.

Yet this story is surreptitiously changing. Mr. Trump riffed about it earlier today: “Over the last month, we’ve been, taking our ships, big ships, quietly at night. You guys didn’t know that? Pretty cool. Right? As a captain, he knows about more about ships than I do. But it’s pretty cool. He turned off the lights.” 

Mr. Trump added: “We bombed their radar and everything so they couldn’t see what was going on. And we took out, some nights, 25 ships, some nights, 15 days. Last 4 or 5 nights we did 25, 22, 21, 26, 18 and 14. Who else would remember those numbers? Nobody.” It’s “a lot of ships,” he concluded.

It’s a great story. Now administration sources tell me about a dozen ships per night are being moved through the strait. I’m doing some arithmetic now — that’s 360 a month. 

Using the same ratio of the first month’s secret passage, that will get us about 180 million additional barrels of oil which would come to roughly 6 million barrels a day. That’s big stuff. Remember we’re 20 million barrels short because of the closing of the Strait.

Now last month’s 3 million barrel, perhaps this month’s 6 million barrels, that’s 9 million additional barrels per day to reduce the 20 million barrel shortfall.

These extra oil supplies are bringing oil prices down in the market place and will continue on a steady basis if it keeps up. Gasoline prices will be following in tow.

It’s a silver lining for the temporary inflation bulge. And it’s gonna make stocks strong and over time, interest rates softer.

Mr. Trump’s secret sauce. Think of it.