Manuel Villalvazo

MBA COO @ TM

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@DonBisca Bienvenido crack!

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

Back in the day

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: U.S. prosecutors indicted Rubén Rocha Moya, a Mexican governor, on accusations of a scheme to help the Sinaloa cartel smuggle drugs into the U.S. https://t.co/yre8DHe908

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

3-D

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Food for thought.

Trump, Hormuz and the End of the Free Ride

For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface.

The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities.

Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress. Militarily, the US can break Iran’s residual ability to contest the Strait; that is not the binding constraint. The point is to delay that act. By allowing a closure or semi‑closure to bite, Trump ensures that the immediate pain is concentrated in exactly the jurisdictions that have most conspicuously free‑ridden on US power: the EU and the UK. Their industries, consumers and energy‑transition assumptions are exposed.

In that context, his reported blunt message to European and British leaders, you need the oil out of the Strait more than we do; why don’t you go and take it? Is not a throwaway line. It is the verbalisation of the antithesis. It openly reverses the traditional presumption that America will carry the burden while its allies emote from the sidelines.

In this dialectic, the prize is not simply the reopening of a chokepoint. The prize is a reordered system in which the United States effectively arbitrages and controls the global flow of oil. A world in which US‑aligned production in the Americas plus a discretionary capability to secure,or not secure, Hormuz places Washington at the centre of the hydrocarbon chessboard. For that strategic end, a rapid restoration of the old status quo would be counterproductive.

A quick, surgical “fix” of Hormuz would short‑circuit the dialectic. If Trump rapidly crushed Iran’s remaining coastal capabilities, swept the mines and escorted tankers back through the Strait, Europe and the UK would heave a sigh of relief and return to business as usual: underfunded militaries, maximalist green posturing and performative disdain for US power, all underwritten by that same power. The contradiction between their dependence and their posture would remain latent.

By declining to supply the synthesis on demand, and by explicitly telling London and Brussels to “go and take it” themselves, Trump forces a reckoning. European and British leaders must confront the fact that their energy systems, their industrial bases and their geopolitical sermons all rest on an American hard‑power foundation they neither finance nor politically respect. The longer the contradiction is allowed to unfold, the stronger the eventual synthesis can be: a new order in which access to secure flows, Hormuz, Venezuela and beyond, is explicitly conditional on real contributions, not assumed as a right.

In that sense, the delay in “taking” the Strait, and the challenge issued to US allies to do it themselves, is not indecision. It is the negative moment Hegel insisted was necessary for history to move. Only by withholding the old guarantee, and by saying so out loud to those who depended on it, can Trump hope to end the free ride.

[Robin Brooks @robin_j_brooks]

The Dollar is falling steadily versus EM. Brazil and Mexico are allowing their currencies to rise, but China, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and Chile are intervening to stop their currencies from rising against the US Dollar. EM currency manipulation is back...
https://t.co/4z57KA153r

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@spectatorindex You don’t say…

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@stats_feed House of cards!

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@spectatorindex Do you think their wedding was expensive? Wait to see their divorce

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

“These acts stoke competition between his clients, who are usually the ones with the ball in their hands most of the night. *Iron sharpens iron*, and Hanlen is the forge that heats things up”

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@RollingStone RS trying to please everyone

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@consequence Massive attack

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@EFToussaint 36 y 15 veces, todas justas e irrepetibles.

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@DiegoBalado Bueno, pero era fuera de lugar, no?

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@Llourinho @EFToussaint Quizás con lo que el Barcelona le pagaba al cuerpo de arbitraje, se pudo haber financiado, no?
…
En fin…

[Visual Capitalist @VisualCap]

Prediction Consensus: What the Experts See Coming in 2024 🔍️

This visual is part of our 2024 Global Forecast Series with insights curated from 700+ expert predictions 🔮 #GFS2024

https://t.co/mJJJvcaE2p

[Paul Krugman @paulkrugman]

Dude, where's my recession? In 2023 we gained 2.7 million jobs and saw inflation plunge with no significant rise in unemployment. Doomsayers should be engaging in some significant soul-searching.

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@KeithSpera @lcdsoundsystem Did they play at the end? Who played first?

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

Boston I love you

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

@EFToussaint @AthleticClub Y ahora a ver cómo justifican en la Fiscalia esos €7 millones regalados al vice Negreira

[Manuel Villalvazo @vr_manuel]

It’s happening !