Brent Nears $80 as July Truce Collapses, Gasoline Turns Political

The June truce is already dead: tankers hit in Hormuz, the June memorandum declared finished, and Brent climbing toward $80. But this week I argue the real pressure point isn’t the Gulf at all. It’s the US pump: with special elections in November, gasoline is the one commodity every voter feels, and the latest escalation pushed prices up just as the White House was demanding they fall.

I also put oil’s “chaos decade” in perspective (the post-2020 average Brent close is ~30% above 2004–2020, despite a sub-$16 low), unpack why OPEC+’s fifth straight quota hike may be paper-only, and explain the refined-fuel dominoes now falling: Russia’s outright diesel export ban, China’s fuel-export flip-flop, and Europe’s overlooked pipeline problem.

Read the full breakdown on my Substack → [LINK]

If you want my oil and macro read every week before the move, that’s where I publish first.