Thursday Morning Links

• Trump has escaped other predicaments of his own making, but there is something different about this one. The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base, so diametrically opposed to their reading of the national interest, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project. Those with claims to speak for Trumpism – Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly – have reacted to the invasion with incredulity. Trump may entertain himself with the presidency for the next three years (barring impeachment), but the mutual respect between him and his movement has been ruptured, and his revolution is essentially over. [The Spectator]
• Trump could evoke Truman’s precedent against the Japanese – a rationale widely accepted by American historiography on similar arguments: The need to avoid a US ground invasion against a fanatical enemy. Moreover, in the current atmosphere of total contempt for the very concept of “international law”, he could take the pragmatic view and ask what actual blow-back would he actually face? US allies have already been brutalised over Greenland and other issues in far more direct ways, and still don’t dare to break with Washington. As for US enemies, this live demonstration of nuclear resolve might even strengthen deterrence against them. [Brussels Signal]
• Firms are smart money, and when firms sell equity, that’s a sign that equity is overpriced. Currently, we do not see positive net issuance across the entire market – i.e., firms are not net sellers of equity to external investors. This fact is evident in Figure 2, which shows the sum of dollar net issuance in the past year, normalized by the stock market’s total capitalization. For much of the 1990s, issuance was positive, and at the peak of the bubble in 2000, issuance was more than 5% of market cap, meaning that 5% of the market had been newly issued in the past year. After that bubble collapsed, issuance turned negative and has largely remained so, with the notable exception of the COVID bubble of 2021, when issuance peaked above 2%. But today, issuance is decidedly negative at -0.9%; the supply of shares is shrinking. Ballpark figures, the value of U.S. common stock is around $65T, and every year companies are buying around $500B more equity than they’re selling. [Acadian Asset Management]
• In a construction materials market affected by soft demand and economic uncertainty, Titan America delivered all time high revenue, Net Income, Adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow in 2025. This achievement reflects the strength of our business model, disciplined decision-making, skillful execution across our operations, and an unwavering focus on serving our customers. It showcases once again Titan America’s ability to grow organically and deliver strong results, even in challenging environments. Our Florida segment delivered a robust performance with strong penetration in infrastructure and private non-residential construction segments offsetting a soft residential end-market. Our investments in increased aggregates capacity, expanded capabilities, and self-help operational excellence initiatives delivered record full year revenue and Adjusted EBITDA in 2025. Our Mid-Atlantic segment was impacted by a combination of soft demand in Metro New York and New Jersey, the introduction of tariffs, and weather affecting Virginia and the Carolinas. Resilient pricing, and continued growth in infrastructure, private non-residential construction, including data centers, and cost containment initiatives partially mitigated the impact from the headwinds in the region. [Titan America SA]
• Paul R. Ehrlich, an eminent ecologist and population scientist whose best-selling book, “The Population Bomb,” was celebrated as a prescient warning of a coming age of food shortages and famine but later criticized by conservatives and academic rivals for what they called its sky-is-falling rhetoric, died on Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 93. [The New York Times]
• For a young single person, the economic and social advantages of urban network effects clearly outweigh the dangers of life in the city. You can make more money. The social opportunities are a lot more interesting. The food generally is better. (This is why liberals in Portland and San Francisco love to ostentatiously pretend not to know what you’re talking about when you describe the problems of living there: it’s a flex.) But when people have kids, they quickly lose their confidence that they can fly above the social dysfunction indefinitely. All sorts of abstract, macro policy problems suddenly don’t feel so abstract. Regardless of where they live, Americans are forced to spend colossal amounts of psychological and economic resources acting as private security for their kids — which is at least as inefficient and silly as building a private pool in every backyard. Not only does it exhaust parents, but it prevents kids from developing autonomy, and the physical fitness that naturally comes from running around the neighborhood. [EXIT Newsletter]
• Recent events have interrupted operations at major facilities in Qatar, a significant global supplier. Industry observers note that this situation raises the prospect of widespread shortages, potentially marking the fifth global helium shortage in the past 20 years. These recurring challenges highlight the risks associated with concentrated production, particularly from large projects linked to hydrocarbon operations in geopolitically sensitive regions. [North American Helium Inc.]
• What you’re seeing in the remarkable chart above is that private sector spending on AI in 2026 is forecast to exceed $700 billion, which is not a number that is easy to think about. As a share of GDP, companies are currently devoting more resources to AI than the combined peak annual capital spending on key 1930s public works projects and the Manhattan Project and the 1940s electricity boom and the Apollo Project and Interstate highway construction. It’s important to note that AI spending is overwhelmingly financed by the private sector, whereas most of those infrastructure projects were financed by the largesse of the federal government. Once again, nothing like this has ever happened before, and if you feel extremely confident about how this is going to turn out, I think you might be crazy. [Derek Thompson]