E.J. Antoni

If the bombing schedule stays the way it has been, you're going to continue to see oil prices remain stubbornly high, and you are going to see that price at the pump get worse.

I think people have really underestimated just how much energy markets are going to affect all other aspects of the economy.

Perhaps the most acute one we've seen so far in terms of a non-energy impact has been fertilizer.

And that's because fertilizer is largely synthesized from an energy commodity, natural gas.

Unfortunately, I think what we're looking at in the months to come, again, some of it has already hit markets.

like the price at the pump.

But a lot of these spillover effects, if you will, are yet to come.

I think so, Vince, absolutely, especially when you consider where we're coming from, right?

Now, it is the case, I think he's going to have to probably try to thread the needle a little bit here.

What I mean by that is he needs to acknowledge two things that some people think are contradictory, but they're really not.

And here's what they are.

Number one, we have course corrected.

Under Biden, you were heading in the wrong direction.

Now we're heading in the right direction.

In other words, things are getting better.

But on the other hand,

I think it's worthwhile acknowledging the fact that we're not, quote unquote, there yet.

In other words, we still have not yet undone all of the damage from the Biden years.

A couple of stats, I think, make that very clear.

First is that if you look at what the average American can actually buy with his or her weekly paycheck, that shrunk about 4% under Biden over four years.