Consumers tightened their grip on durable goods, likely spooked by price hikes, and stuck to the essentials—though they still found room in the budget for dining out and vacations. Yet, despite the rebound, real spending rose at a meagre 1% annualized pace in H1 2025, a sharp comedown from 3.1% in 2024. Turns out, even stimulus-fuelled consumption has a shelf life.

Core PCE inflation accelerated in June to its fastest pace since February, with prior months revised higher — because apparently, inflation loves a good encore. Tariff-heavy categories like recreational goods, clothing, and furniture did their part, adding 8bps to the monthly rise, just as scripted. Meanwhile, financial services went from inflation drag to inflation fuel, as portfolio-management fees fattened on the back of the post-“Liberation Day” equity rally. Who knew fighting tariffs could be so profitable — for someone else.

In a nutshell, Uncle Sam lifted incomes while tariffs lifted prices, leaving Americans spending less, saving more, and discovering that even stimulus has an expiration date—just as core inflation found a new gear.

Dear Investors,

Please find below the July 2025 factsheet for The Macro Butler Long/Short Portfolio.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-longshort-portfolio-d22

Dear Investors,

Please find below the July 2025 factsheet for The Macro Butler Strategic Portfolio.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-strategic-portfolio-bcb

Dear Investors,

Please find below the July 2025 factsheet for The Macro Butler IG Portfolio.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-ig-portfolio-july-fb0

A powerful MacroVoices interview with RickRule and Erik Townsend —reminding us that cheap, abundant energy is the true engine of prosperity. Because in the end, everything is energy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyrbwHbpcis

A chillingly brilliant dispatch from Pepe Escobar, exposing Donald Copperfield’s delusional takes on BRICS—where his provocations toward China and India only tighten the grip of the emerging Triumvirate. Despite the West’s Malthusian fantasies, the new world order is coalescing, and it won’t ask for permission.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NHSIeOP3O0

The rockstar CEO of the Magnificent 7 chip giant has styled himself as the peacemaker-in-chief between the U.S. and China to protect market share—but behind the scenes, his charm offensive likely came at the price of cooperation with U.S. alphabet agencies, quietly embedding backdoors in chips sold to Beijing.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/31/china-probes-nvidia-h20-chips-for-tracking-risks.html

In a world tearing at the seams, U.S. multinationals clinging to China as their golden goose are sleepwalking into a geopolitical buzzsaw—and the wake-up call will be anything but gentle.

As always with Donald Copperfield, it's all smoke, mirrors, and TACO-ing when action is needed. Case in point: his grand copper tariff announcement sounded tough—until he quietly exempted copper cathodes, the main form of refined copper the U.S. actually imports. Cue the brutal unwinding of bullish bets that had banked on a full-spectrum tariff. Classic Copperfield—headline first, substance optional.

In true Orwellian fashion, Donald Copperfield invoked the Defence Production Act to decree that copper—once just a metal—is now a matter of national security. By 2027, 25% of high-grade scrap and raw copper must be produced and consumed within U.S. borders, rising to 40% by decade’s end. The rationale?

An overreliance on foreign powers, a gutted industrial base, and the quiet admission that one unnamed nation—clearly China—has monopolized the global smelting game. In this new era, even atoms answer to the state.

While the Manipulator-in-Chief brags online about the “booming” U.S. economy, July’s nonfarm payrolls print tells a different story. Seasonally adjusted jobs rose just 73k — well below consensus. Even worse, May and June were quietly revised down by a whopping 258k. June’s once-confident 147k gain? Now basically flat at 14k.

The government — once the heroic job engine — added only 11k jobs in June, down from the original 70k fantasy. Local governments even lost jobs in July. Private payrolls added just 83k, with healthcare the only bright spot. Meanwhile, sectors like manufacturing and professional services dragged heavily. The three-month average? A pathetic 35k, well below the 80k–100k needed to keep up with population growth — and that’s before correcting for the BLS’s birth-death model, which may be overstating gains by 80k a month. Take that out, and we’re in negative territory since Trump's so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Unemployment rate jumped to 4.25%, even as the labor force shrank. The participation rate dropped again to 62.22%. In other words, fewer people are working or even trying to.

Sure, workers clocked a few more hours and earned a touch more pay, but the big picture is clear: this labour market isn’t just cooling — it’s quietly cracking. Despite upbeat headlines, the unemployment rate has remained above its two-year average since September 2023—an historically reliable precursor to economic downturns over the next 12 to 24 months.

In a nutshell, the jobs market just tripped over a massive downward revision, shrinking participation, and payroll gains that are vanishing on arrival.

As the self-anointed Peacemaker-in-Chief flirts with nuclear escalation, the economic battlefield at home continues to bleed. The ISM Manufacturing Index dropped another point to 48 in July, marking five consecutive months in contraction territory—an unmistakable signal of industrial retreat. Factory employment, now at its weakest in over five years, is being strategically downsized as manufacturers brace for prolonged economic warfare triggered by tariffs and waning demand. According to ISM, companies are entrenched in defensive cost control, holding fire on new hires even as production marginally ticks up. Of the five components of the index, only production remained in expansion, while orders, employment, and export demand all stayed in the red.

A tactical reprieve came from falling input costs, with the “prices paid” measure registering its sharpest drop since September. But make no mistake—beneath the surface, the industrial complex is under siege, and the latest salvo of tariffs may only deepen the contraction.

In a nutshell, as a fresh tariff offensive was just launched, America’s manufacturing front retreats deeper into contraction, with factories cutting troops and bracing for economic crossfire.

U.S. consumer sentiment ticked up to a five-month high in July—because apparently a stock market rally is all it takes to convince people things are fine. Inflation expectations dropped, with consumers now hoping prices will only rise 3.4% over the next decade, the lowest dose of inflation since January. Yet, in classic whiplash fashion, those same consumers also expect business conditions to stay lousy and unemployment to climb.

In short: “We feel good... but not really.”