Investing IINsights — Weekly Email Audio Edition Topic: AI Is Widening the Trade Deficit & Oil Storage Is Running on Fumes

This week’s market data is messy—but not in the obvious way.

The U.S. trade deficit widened, but the reason matters: the AI infrastructure boom is driving massive imports of advanced chips, components, and capital equipment. At the same time, tariffs are not eliminating imports as much as they’re reshuffling supply chains through countries like Taiwan, Vietnam, and Mexico.

Meanwhile, U.S. oil inventories are getting uncomfortably thin. Cushing—the key delivery hub for WTI crude—is approaching operational floor levels, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is already depleted enough that the government has far less backup capacity than normal.

We also talk about the A ...