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Nigeria's biggest refinery imports UAE crude for first time, traders say
Nigeria's 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote refinery has imported ?2 million barrels of crude ?from ADNOC of the United Arab Emirates, ?traders told , ?marking its first ?such purchases ?of crude from the Middle Eastern producer. As demand in Asia has weakened and global crude markets have weakened dramatically, the purchases are being made at a time when the Middle East crude market is able to supply more Middle Eastern crude due to the 'U.S. Iran ceasefire' earlier this month. Three sources have confirmed that Dangote imported a cargo of Umm Lulu oil and another?of Das or Murban in June. The Dangote refinery refused to comment while ADNOC didn't immediately respond to an inquiry for comment. The refinery receives five to seven crude carloads a week from NNPC (Nigeria’s state-owned oil company), benefitting from lower shipping rates. However, it has stated that they require 'about 13 to fifteen cargoes a week. According to Kpler data, the Dangote refinery, which has become a major supplier of middle distillates into Europe because of fuel shortages caused by disruptions in shipping through the Strait, also imported up to 65,000 barrels per day (bpd)?of Libyan oil in 'May. Isaac Anyaogu and Seher Dareen in Lagos, Robert Harvey in London. (Editing by Alex Lawler, Mark Potter and Mark Potter).
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Heatwave tests Ukraine soldiers' Soviet-era tanks
The searing heat of a record-breaking European heatwave, which spilled over into Ukraine, slammed down on soldiers trapped inside a massive steel tank from the Soviet era. The scorching temperatures across Europe have caused power outages, infrastructure damage and overwhelmed healthcare systems. The heat of the battle in Ukraine has created its own challenges. The vehicle becomes very hot when it has completed its mission. The temperature inside can get really hot, said the chief sergeant for the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade's tank battalion using "Sympatiaha" as his call sign on Sunday. This tank does not have air conditioning, unlike the Western-supplied?Abrams?, Challenger? and Leopard? tanks. Under the summer sun, Soviet-era T-72 battle tanks that weigh between 41-45 tons can become heat traps. Sympatiaha and her fellow soldiers sat on top of their tank in a leafy area, trying to cool off by splashing water onto their faces from a bottle. The temperatures in the area hovered around 30 degrees Celsius over the weekend. They are expected to reach 36 C by Tuesday. The crew remained committed despite the scorching heat to stopping Russian troops from moving forward. "Despite the harsh conditions of the weather - scorching temperatures now, freezing temperature and mud in winter – we are still holding on," he said. "We continue to fight against the Russian forces. We're trying to stop them from advancing, and?push? them out?of?here." Ukrainians in other parts of the country were preparing for a return to hourly power outages as temperatures rose, driving up electricity usage - largely because air conditioners are more popular. (Writing and editing by Ros Russell; Anna Pruchnicka)
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The Fed's hawkish stance on gold could lead to the worst quarter-end loss for gold in 13 years
Gold eased on Monday and was on course for its biggest?quarterly? decline in 13 years as inflation fears stemming out of the Middle East conflict fueled expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve would raise interest rates. Gold spot dropped by 0.2%, to $4.008.94 an ounce at 8:59 am. ET (1258 GMT), after reaching its lowest level in November. Prices have fallen 11.3% so far in June. U.S. gold futures fell -0.4% per ounce to $4,022.70. The precious metal is headed for its first quarter decline since 2024, and its steepest quarterly drop since the June quarter of 2013 when inflation fears were stoked by the Gulf conflict. Gold is often seen as a "hedge" against inflation. However, rising rates can weigh heavily on this non-yielding material. Edward Meir of?Marex said that the markets were a bit uneasy over the stability of the?MOU and gold was under pressure because they didn't see much light at the end of the tunnel. A Qatari official has said that top U.S. diplomats in Doha won't hold a meeting at a high level with Iran. This casts doubt on progress made to end the Iran War. The U.S. readings on inflation remain stubbornly high, and far above the Fed's target of 2%. The markets expect the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates high for a long time and even consider rate increases, Meir stated. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, traders?price in about a 66% chance of a rate hike in September. Investors will now be watching the ADP Employment Data due on Wednesday, and the U.S. nonfarm payrolls due on Thursday to gauge the Fed's policy stance. A recent OMFIF study revealed that central banks were more likely to reduce their U.S. Dollar exposure in the coming decade, due to increased geopolitical worries, and increase their gold holdings. Silver spot fell 0.8%, to $58.2585 an ounce. This is the biggest quarterly decline since the first quarter 2020. Palladium increased 0.2%, to $1,215.94, while platinum fell 0.7%, to $1564.34. Both metals are on course to record monthly and quarterly losses.
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Treasury's Bessent says that "we are watching" as it urges gas retailers in the US to lower prices on their 250th anniversary.
?U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday urged gasoline retailers to lower their prices in honor of the?U.S. The United States celebrates its 250th birthday. President Donald?Trump reiterates his message that "we are watching." Bessent, in an interview with Fox News, said: "I'd encourage all gasoline retailers. Some of them are owned and operated by Big Oil. Others are independent. And some are international convenience stores." "I'd encourage them to act responsibly, particularly?during the 250th anniversary because we are watching." Bessent reiterated his boss's warning to gas stations Monday that they must lower their prices immediately, or else face "big issues." "If Retailers do not?do that, then big problems are ahead!" Trump said in a post on social media that he would "start focusing around the $2.50 per gallon number". The United States will celebrate its founding on Saturday as part of the holiday celebrating the 4th of July. After the U.S., Israel, and other countries launched strikes against Iran in late-February and Iran responded by attacking Israel and Gulf states that have U.S. bases, oil prices spiked. Bessent stated that the Trump administration is expecting gas prices to follow the global price drop. Bessent told "Fox & Friends" that the administration would hold the other side accountable. As the president and his Republican colleagues fight to maintain a narrow majority in Congress, consumers have expressed concern over high gasoline prices.
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Treasury's Bessent says that "we are watching" as it urges gas retailers in the US to lower prices on their 250th anniversary.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday urged gasoline'retailers' to lower prices in celebration of the U.S.'s 250th birthday, reinforcing 'Trump's message with a warning 'we're monitoring' Bessent, in an interview with Fox News, said: "I'd encourage all gasoline retailers. Some of them are owned and operated by Big Oil. Others are independent. And some are international convenience stores." "I'd encourage them to act responsibly, especially during the 250th anniversary of the?Oil Industry, because we are watching." Bessent repeated his boss's warning to gas stations Monday that they must lower their prices immediately, or else face "big issues." "If Retailers don't do ?this, big problems lie ahead! Trump wrote on social media that "start focusing around the $2.50 per gallon number." The United States will celebrate its founding on Saturday as part of the holiday celebrating the 4th of July. The U.S., Israel and Gulf?states that have U.S. bases attacked Israel and the oil prices spiked after late February when Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran. Bessent stated that the Trump administration expected gas prices to follow suit after a 'first agreement' was signed this month. Bessent told "Fox & Friends" that the administration would hold the other side accountable. As the president and his Republican colleagues fight to maintain a narrow majority in Congress, consumers have expressed concern over high gasoline prices.
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GRAPHIC-Volkswagen crisis in five charts
Oliver Blume, the head of Volkswagen, is planning a historic overhaul to adapt to structural changes in the global automotive market. Rising Chinese competitors, tariffs, and weak demand for cars in Europe are all affecting its business model. The crisis has increased scrutiny on Europe's largest automaker. It has been struggling for years with a complex structural design, a weak share performance, and some stakeholders' resistance to painful costs cuts. PARALYSED CONGLOMERATED Volkswagen's "governance" and "structure and ownership" are unique to the auto industry. They combine powerful unions and the billionaire Porsche-Piech family, who control the majority of the voting rights, but not the majority of the equity. The 89-year old group employing more than 657, 000 people still looks like a traditional conglomerate. Some investors believe that this set-up weighs down its valuation. Big Trouble in China Volkswagen's problems are most visible in China, which is the largest auto market in the world and has been a major source of profit for the company for many years. But those days are over. The profits in China have fallen by more than 80% during the last decade. This has led to a greater focus on Europe where the demand is expected remain below the pre-COVID level, and the United States where tariffs cost the company billions. The competition has also intensified. Volkswagen, China's largest automaker for many years, has fallen to third position as domestic competitors with more advanced technology have gained market shares. Porsche, the car that?Volkswagen listed four years ago in a landmark IPO, was among the most?hard-hit. Its margins dropped from 18% to 1.1% in the year following the IPO. Profits Under Pressure Volkswagen's profit margins have more than halved from 2021 to 2025. This is due to fiercer competition, rising labour and energy prices, a weak European market, and growing trade barriers. The company is still the second largest automaker in the world by number of cars sold, after Japan's Toyota. ROCK BOTTOM Volkswagen shares, which have fallen to their lowest levels since July 2010, are also being battered by the upheaval in the auto industry. Stocks are now trading below the levels reached a decade earlier during the Dieselgate Scandal, which is widely considered to be the biggest corporate crisis of the group's history.
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McGeever: Why Trump's tariffs have a lot of bark but little bite
Donald Trump's favourite word is "tariff", and his continued use of the term last year caused fear in the markets, as the U.S. administration unilaterally implemented the most protectionist trade policies since 1930s. The bark was worse than the bite. Just over a month has passed since Trump declared "Liberation Day" and the average U.S. Tariff rate is lower in April 2025 than many had feared. The daily effective pre-substitution rate, at just over 10%, is four times higher than it was at the end of 2024. Tariffs are barely a?record in today's financial markets. This is partly because investors are more concerned about real wars than trade wars. The economic impact of Trump’s tariffs is also not as bad as many people feared. This could be because the trade war coincided a technological boom. Perhaps that is too simplistic. It may be years before the full impact of the redrawing of geopolitical and trade alliances in the world is known. Unexpected negative shocks could be on the way. The fact that STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT tariffs have had a muted impact on the economy over the last year is partly explained by a simple fact: Actual levies were lower than statutory rate. This is the main argument of a Brookings Institution article by Pablo D. Fajgelbaum of University of California, and Amit Khandelwal of Yale University. By December of last year, the authors found that 57% or so of U.S. imported goods were still duty-free. This includes the majority of goods imported from Canada and Mexico, under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The Trump administration will formally?declare Wednesday that it won't extend the 32-year old North American Free Trade Zone. But that only starts a new review process. Tariffs at the border are often lower than headline rates due to legal loopholes or special agreements. The retaliation to Trump's tariffs was mostly modest or short lived, with China being the only major trading partners who offered a firm and sustained response. Hyperscalers invested hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure and chips to boost global trade. According to the Brookings article, the net effect of tariffs has been only between 0.1% and 0.1% of GDP until December. The Brookings paper says that these?findings are in line with the analysis done by The Budget Lab, a Yale-based research group. It estimates that tariffs will cause the U.S. to be 0.1% less prosperous in the long term, which is the equivalent of $30 billion in 2025 dollars. Other words, statistically significant, but not at all in the near future. Markets vs Real Economy Try telling that to U.S. customers, who are forced to pay 90% of Trump's Tariffs. In an April Federal Reserve report, the paper found that tariffs are solely responsible for the excess inflation of core goods from January 2025. The same paper, however, also indicated that the tariff pass-through is now essentially complete. It was, in other words, a price increase that happened only once, as the Trump Administration had claimed. If true, this would be good news for Americans whose personal savings rate, which has fallen to the lowest level in four years due to higher prices, is now below 3%. There is also another side to the story. Tariffs are taxes that fall on the person who pays them. Usually, this is the consumer. They are a direct source of revenue for the government, reaching $264 billion in 2017. This is more than three times the revenue in 2024 and represents 0.83% GDP, which is the highest since over a century. Theoretically, the revenue generated by tax cuts and higher spending should be able to offset some of the impact on consumers. SLOW BURN? But investors shouldn't become complacent. Although trade uncertainty has decreased, it is still very high. According to the Tax Foundation, the U.S. tariff policies have changed more than fifty times since the start of Trump's second tenure. There's no reason to think that this is the end, considering the Trump administration's willingness to use tariffs to threaten foreign policy negotiations. Investors have mostly ignored these concerns. Rebecca Harding, trade economist and writer whose latest book "The World at Economic War" was published in late 2012, says that markets have become detached from the reality of the economy. The cost of doing business internationally will continue to rise as a result of increased trade uncertainty. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) will struggle to keep up with the demands. It's clear that the predictions of tariff doom by many economists have been wrong, but it could be just a question of timing. Brexit is a cautionary tale. The UK economy didn't immediately crash after Britain voted in 2016 to leave the European Union. There is no doubt that 10 years later, the economic damage has been severe. It is still unclear whether the slow-burning economic impact of tariffs on the U.S. will be similar. However, it's worth asking. You like this column? Open Interest (ROI) is your new essential source of global financial commentary. Follow ROI on LinkedIn and X. Listen to the Morning Bid podcast daily on Apple, Spotify or the app. Subscribe to the Morning Bid podcast and hear journalists discussing the latest news in finance and markets seven days a weeks.
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EU announces new steel import quotas in order to protect the industry from overcapacity
The European Commission announced quotas for the new system to limit duty-free imports of steel into the EU. This move was aimed at protecting the steel industry in the bloc and increasing its capacity utilization. The new rules reduce the annual EU tariff-free import quotas by 47%, to 18,3 million metric tonnes, and introduce a 50% duty for steel products that are imported outside of the quota. The Commission stated that the rules will come into force on Wednesday and aim to increase the steel capacity utilization within the EU to 80%. Eurofer, the European steel association, says that the new rules will only increase capacity utilization from 67% to 73%-75%. Eurofer's Director General, Axel Eggert said that the EU steelmakers will likely recover 15 million metric tonnes of production. This is about half of what they have lost in recent years. The import quotas are divided into two parts: one half is reserved for partners in free-trade agreements (FTAs) and the other half is available to all trading parties, including those who have an FTA. The Commission said that many of these partners would receive country-specific quotes proportionate to the volume they have historically produced. It said that "most of the EU FTA partners' market access will be reduced by a significant amount compared to the average 47% reduction foreseen in the Steel Regulation." The Commission stated that a "significant number" (?) of partners has provisionally agreed with these allocations. The Commission stated that the rules are needed to "protect the European Steel Industry from Overcapacity and Dumping Practices elsewhere in the World". It said that "persistent global steel overcapacity?remains as a serious problem on a global scale and continues to distort the international markets." The measure "restores fair competition on a market that has been affected by distortions due to overcapacity", it said. Eggert, Eurofer, said that to have a more significant impact on the steel industry, it may be necessary to extend the measure to downstream industries, such as those who laminate steel or stamp out sheets for cars. Bart Meijer and Phil Blenkinsop; Inti Landauro, Hugo Lhomedet, and Susan Fenton, edited by Sudip K. Gupta.
The gasoline pump takes away what the Trump tax breaks gives.
Donald Trump, the U.S. president, proclaimed in February that this year's refunds were "substantially higher than ever before" thanks to individual tax breaks approved by 2025. He told taxpayers they should think of him as soon as their funds reached their bank accounts. "Don't use all this money at once!" He wrote this on the Truth Social platform. The gasoline pump is eating up the tax refunds from last year's Republican tax-cut legislation. This includes tax breaks for tips, Social Security retirement, overtime pay and car loan interest. Oil prices remained close to $100 per barrel on Friday, despite a tenuous truce in the U.S.-Iran war. The Strait of Hormuz was still closed. Even if the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about 20% the world's supply of oil, reopens in the near future, fuel prices may continue to rise for several months. This is according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It predicts that global benchmark Brent crude will average $96 per barrel this year. Rystad Energy estimates that the destruction of energy infrastructure in the Gulf will have a negative impact on future production. This figure may rise as the attacks continue.
Tax breaks will have the least impact on Americans who earn less and spend more money on gasoline. U.S. consumer price jumped the most since nearly four years, up 0.9% in March. This was due to the record-breaking increase in gasoline prices, largely because of the global oil price spike and the continued pass-through of tariffs. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showed this on Friday. The Middle East conflict could cause higher costs for fuel, fertilizer and aluminum, as well as other inputs. Food inflation, and other price increases may also eat into any remaining refunds. According to the latest Internal Revenue Service data, as of March 27, 2025's average refund was $3,521. This is an increase of $351 or 11.1% from the previous year. The figures may change before the deadline for filing taxes on April 15, Wednesday. Morgan Stanley's estimate is $560, the conservative Tax Foundation's estimate is $611, and the U.S. Treasury's estimate of $1,000. Some of the relief could come from reduced income withholding, or lower quarterly tax payments for individuals.
TAX REFUNDS TURNING Into ECONOMIC CUSHION Economists 'at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research' estimate that war-driven price peaks have pushed Americans' annual average gasoline costs for this past year up by $857. Brent futures traded at $99 per barrel on March 23, about $2 more than Friday, and the Strait of Hormuz was expected to reopen by April 10.
Democrats in the Joint Economic Committee in Congress estimate Americans spent an additional $8,4 billion on gasoline in the first month after the Iran War. They based their estimates on data provided by the motorist advocacy group AAA and Edmunds.com, as well as federal data on gasoline consumption. This figure represents nearly a quarter of the $26.5billion increase in total IRS refunds from March 27 to date. Professor of Economics at Stanford University, Neale Mahoney said that gas prices were the most important price in the economy. The impacts are modest in the macro-scenario, but they can have a big impact on the kitchen-table economy of a family and other things they pay attention to. Families who were expecting a larger refund or planning an expensive summer vacation this year, may decide to cut back on their plans. As higher prices for diesel, fertilizer and jet fuel spread through the economy, grocery bills are also expected to increase.
Analysts are now reducing their U.S. GDP and consumption forecasts by just a few tenths. Morgan Stanley expects that in 2026,?consumption will slow down to 1.7%, from 2.1%?in 2025. Durable goods are expected to take the biggest hit. Oxford Economics has reduced its global GDP forecast for 2026 from 3.0% to 2.6%, which is well below recent years.
Homeowners can now take advantage of bigger deductions
Most of the tax breaks in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the Republican-controlled Congress last year ?were retroactive to the start of 2025, so most of the first-year benefits will come through claimed income deductions.
This change would result in a refund increase of $138 for those who fall into the 12% tax bracket with incomes between $11,926 and $48,475. This would result in a $138 refund for those who fall into the 12% bracket and have incomes between $11,926 and $48,475.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the overtime deduction a "home run" last week, with 25% of filers claiming that it.
One of the largest breaks, the $30,000 increase in the deduction of state and local tax paid, requires itemization. This makes it largely out of reach for non-homeowners, who do not have mortgages or property taxes. Tax Foundation data shows that it's only when tax returns are in the range of market income of $71,659 - $126,348 that taxpayers have any money left after paying for their higher fuel costs. Market income is adjusted gross income plus tax-exempt interests, employer-sponsored pension and health benefits, and other items. Tax Foundation data shows, however, that even if you earn up to $37 486, the tax cuts are greater for those in the top 0.1%.
(source: Reuters)