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June 15, 2026 — Peace? Prosperity? Perversion?

Check out this week’s blog post by IP attorney, author Timothy Trainer, host of the podcast and video show Tim’s Travails • Follow Tim on Substack

Images Sources (right) The New York Times, (below) BloombergNEF

We awake the morning of June 15, 2026, to news of some kind of deal between the U.S. and Iran to cease military hostilities. Does this mean peace? No one really knows and that includes the Criminal-in-Chief telling us he’s obtained a great agreement that, at the moment, seems to be short on the details (where the devil resides). The only thing that is somewhat certain is that we’ve entered a 60-day talking period. Thus, this isn’t a real peace. This is a temporary halt with the possibility of more military actions against Iran.

Despite the absence of details and the real possibility that we could return to hostilities by Labor Day, or sooner, if the Criminal-in-Chief changes his mind again, the markets in many countries shot upward on the announced development. With the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz about to occur and the flow of oil resuming, optimism of lower oil prices spurred markets with the hope that the global economy would slowly return to the new “normal” and companies will prosper (millions of consumers, well, maybe less so).

The world wants desperately to return to the pre-U.S./Israel-Iran war days. It is a return to a global environment when the U.S.’s Criminal-in-Chief created constant chaos by imposing tariffs, threatening to impose tariffs, threatening trade agreements, threatening to take over Greenland and undermining NATO. Indeed, after 100+ days of war and instability in the Middle East with soaring energy prices and the impact of those increased prices on the world’s economy, the acceptance of the perverse new normal is welcomed and embraced.

The embrace of this new normal, perverse as it may be, might be hiding something. Underneath the surface, most of the U.S.’s major global trading partners had already embarked on rethinking their global economic and trade relationships arising from the U.S.’s international trade policy disruptions. What is also clear is that the 100+ days of war and chaos in the Middle East prodded a few governments to rethink energy security strategies.

As we know, under this administration, U.S. government policy decisions at the federal level are made to undercut renewable energy projects. Indeed, the 80-year-old Criminal-in-Chief has directed $700 million to coal-fired power plants.

Trump announces $700M in new support for struggling coal industry – NBC4 Washington. The administration has also rescinded over $2 billion intended to support clean hydrogen projects. Trump’s cuts to billion-dollar hydrogen hubs rattle… | Canary Media. Some of the administration’s efforts to shut down funding for solar and wind energy projects have been reversed by the courts. US judge scraps Trump policy restricting wind, solar tax breaks | Reuters. These actions demonstrate the inability of this administration to evaluate and assess security issues given how critical energy security is to the nation’s overall security—beyond the military.

The irony is that the U.S.’s war of choice against Iran prompted some to look at how our economic adversaries, especially China, are considering actions to improve their energy security and reduce reliance on the Middle East. With China as the U.S.’s greatest economic competitor, it’s worth noting that China may become the country all look to for technology developments in the area of green hydrogen energy (remember, China leads everyone in the area of rare earth minerals processing). According to China’s 15^th Five-Year Plan, its objective is “Large scale green hydrogen use for coal substitution and green fuel production”. No, Iran War Won’t Boost Clean Hydrogen – Except in China | BloombergNEF.

The temporary end to hostilities between the U.S. and Iran returns the global economic environment to this perverse new “normal”, but with a twist. The U.S. Government seems blind to addressing energy security except to fund archaic energy sources like coal. Other governments are seeking to support new ways of reaching a higher level of energy security that reduces their dependence on the Middle East and on oil.

Given the attitudes of those in this administration, it is not a question of will we lose the race for energy-related technology and security but a question of how much of an advantage have we already surrendered.

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About the Timothy Trainer: Writing books is a passion for attorney Timothy Trainer, who for more than three decades focused on intellectual property issues in his day job. He has worked in government agencies and in the private sector, and his assignments have taken him to 60 countries around the world.

Tim found time to pen a few non-fiction tomes, including his first book, Customs Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights; the 15th edition was published in 2022. Thomson Reuters’ Aspatore Books published Tim’s next title in 2015, Potato Chips to Computer Chips: The War on Fake Stuff. 

Fiction was a genre he always wanted to try. In 2019, Pendulum Over the Pacific, was released by Joshua Tree Publishing. “This political intrigue story is set in Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and centers on trade tensions between the U.S. and Japan in the late 1980s,” Tim explains.

In 2023, his first series hit bookstores: The China Connection.

In 2025, he published the sequel, The China Factor, which ranked #63 on the Amazon Asian Literature list in May.

Click here to learn about all of Tim’s books