Trump Landed In Beijing This Morning. The Energy Play Nobody Sees Is Already Moving.

Dear Reader,

Trump touched down in Beijing this morning for talks with Xi Jinping. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Oil just crossed $101 a barrel. And the White House is calling the Iran ceasefire on life support.

Meanwhile, something else happened this week that the financial press has barely touched. A nuclear company just signed a deal to power one of the world's biggest tech companies. Not someday. Right now. With a 1.2-gigawatt campus already planned and the first payment already made.

I have been saying this for years: the energy wars do not end. They accelerate. The people who get rich in moments like this are not the ones betting on which side wins the war. They are the ones who own the infrastructure that delivers power regardless of how the fight turns out.

Today I want to show you exactly where that infrastructure is being built.

THE WIRE

What I am watching today

• THE BARREL: Oil just crossed $101 — but there is a number buried inside this week's Hormuz shipping data that tells you far more about where prices go next than the crude price itself.

• THE GRID: A nuclear company just signed a deal with one of the world's biggest tech firms for 1.2 gigawatts of power. Meta is not just signing — they are prepaying. I want to tell you why the structure of this deal matters more than the headline number.

• THE POLICY DESK: Trump is in Beijing right now negotiating an energy deal the mainstream press keeps burying. It has almost nothing to do with tariffs.

• Trump's hand-written letter reveals a May 15 economic move that could unleash $100 trillion in new wealth — Jim Rickards has the details

• THE PLAY: The investors who make real money in an energy crisis are never the ones betting on which side wins. I will show you the specific toll-collector structure I am watching right now.

THE BARREL

Oil, gas, and the Hormuz math

WTI crude closed above $101 a barrel yesterday. Brent is at $107. The IEA is calling this the largest oil supply disruption in the history of the global market.

Here is what that means in plain numbers. The Strait of Hormuz normally moves about 20% of the world's oil. Last week, three tankers got through. Three. Some with their tracking systems turned off to avoid being targeted.

Saudi Aramco's CEO warned on Sunday that if the Strait stays closed, the disruption could run into 2027. His estimate: 100 million barrels lost every single week the blockade holds. OPEC+ voted to raise production by 188,000 barrels a day — but that oil cannot reach buyers. The UAE already quit OPEC entirely.

U.S. shale is running near record output: 13.6 million barrels per day. The rig count is actually down 57 year-over-year. That tells you something important. American producers are leaner and more efficient than ever. They are managing capital, not flooding the market.

Natural gas sits at $2.83 per MMBtu. That is the sleeper number. LNG export terminals are running near all-time highs — 18.85 billion cubic feet a day. Cheniere just raised its full-year profit guidance after a record quarter in cargo volume. The energy crisis has a geopolitical lid on top of it. But underneath that lid, American LNG is the only functional alternative to a closed Strait.

THE GRID

Nuclear, SMRs, and the new power race

The bigger story is not whether Hormuz reopens next week or next year. The bigger story is what is being built to make sure this never happens again.

Last week, Oklo signed a deal with Meta: 1.2 gigawatts of nuclear power for Meta's data centers in Ohio. Meta is not signing a letter of intent. They are prepaying. They are funding Phase 1 directly. That kind of money only moves when someone is absolutely certain.

Kairos Power broke ground at Oak Ridge National Laboratory this month — a 50-megawatt reactor that will power Google's data centers. Google does not gamble. When Google signs a 20-year power contract and breaks ground on a reactor, they have done the math on every other option and decided nuclear wins.

I have been tracking one specific piece of this buildout for three weeks. Not the big names in the news. The infrastructure layer underneath — fuel supply, components, site services. The last time I saw capital moving into this layer at this pace, early investors saw returns that Wall Street analysts later called impossible.

There is a structural reason this setup looks different right now — and it comes down to one regulatory change that happened in March that almost nobody in the financial press has explained properly. It changes the entire licensing timeline for every new reactor in America. Before I show you exactly what that means for the companies I am watching...

...here is why that change makes the timing right now so unusual.

The NRC published Part 53 on March 25. It is the first new reactor licensing framework in decades. Technology-inclusive. Risk-informed. It cuts years off the approval process for advanced reactor designs. That is not a rumor. It is law.

TerraPower already has a construction permit for a sodium-cooled fast reactor in Wyoming — the first advanced design to hit that milestone in modern U.S. history. The NRC is now proposing Part 57, a microreactor framework that could cut licensing time to six to twelve months. The DOE launched what they call the Nuclear Dominance 3 by 33 campaign — 90 companies building out the full fuel cycle by 2033.

This is not lobbying. This is permits and groundbreakings and prepaid power contracts.

FERC has committed to ruling on how data centers connect to the grid by the end of June. That ruling determines who pays for the transmission upgrades that 300-to-500-megawatt AI campuses require. Whoever owns that infrastructure — the grid connection, the fuel supply, the site services — sits in a toll booth that collects every time a hyperscaler turns on a new server.

The bottleneck in this economy is not chips. It is power. And the people who own the infrastructure that delivers that power are the ones I want to be invested alongside.

THE POLICY DESK

Washington, Beijing, and the inflation trap

Let me tell you what Trump is actually doing in Beijing today. The public story is tariffs and chip restrictions. But energy is on that table too. Alaska LNG — a $44 billion project — is reportedly part of the conversation. Trump previously got China to agree to begin large-scale American energy purchases. The follow-through is being negotiated right now, this morning.

USTR Greer said it plainly yesterday: any country buying Iranian oil is contributing to terrorism. That is a direct warning to Beijing about their Iranian crude purchases. How Xi responds will move oil markets on Thursday.

Back home, the April inflation numbers came in hot. CPI is at 3.8% year-over-year — a three-year high. Gasoline is up 28% over last year. Airline fares up 20%. The Fed's rate cut odds for 2026 have collapsed to about 5%.

That is the stagflation trap. Inflation too high to cut. Economy too fragile to raise. The Fed is frozen.

The S&P closed modestly lower today. Gold is at $4,700. The 10-year Treasury yield hit 4.46% as bonds sold off on the inflation data. The bond market is pricing out rate cuts entirely for 2026. That is the bond market and the energy market saying the same thing at the same time: this inflation is structural, not temporary.

In a stagflation environment, the wealthy do not hold paper. They hold cash-flowing real assets. Energy infrastructure. Power plants. Long-term contracts with creditworthy counterparties. These are toll booths that collect revenue whether the political fights get resolved or not.

THE PLAY

Where I am positioning right now

Here is what I know about moments like this one. The Hormuz crisis will end. Peace deals happen. Oil prices correct. What does not correct is the structural demand for reliable power.

Every major tech company is now racing to lock up long-term nuclear contracts. They are not doing this because nuclear is fashionable. They are doing this because the grid cannot handle AI demand — and every month they wait is a month a competitor secures the power they need first. Meta just prepaid for 1.2 gigawatts. Amazon locked up 1.9 gigawatts from Talen Energy through 2042. Microsoft signed a 20-year contract with Constellation for 835 megawatts.

The investors positioned ahead of that buildout — in the companies that hold permits, long-term power contracts, and fuel supply deals — are going to look back at 2026 as the year the setup was obvious.

My research team has been tracking the specific companies inside this nuclear buildout that most retail investors have never heard of. Not the names making headlines. The infrastructure layer underneath: fuel supply, components, site services. The toll collectors who get paid on every megawatt, regardless of which company's name is on the reactor.

To your power,
Robert Kiyosaki

P.S. While the media focuses on Iran and oil prices, Jim Rickards says there's a bigger economic move coming May 15 — one Trump outlined in a hand-written letter. Click here to see what's coming before it happens.