Oil Prices Lose 6.6% amid Tariffs, Production Increase
Oil prices have plunged further after President Donald Trump's tariffs and OPEC+'s decision to increase production at a faster rate than previously announced, leading to their worst decline since 2022.
Brent crude futures fell 6.42% to settle at $70.14 a barrel. US crude futures also fell 6.64% to settle at $66.95 a barrel. Also, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell below $67 a barrel, after losing 6.6% on Thursday, while Brent crude closed near $70.
This marked Brent's worst decline since August 1, 2022, while US crude recorded its worst decline since July 11, 2022.
Latest Oil Prices:
WTI Crude $66.28 -1.00%
Brent Crude $69.48 -0.94%
Murban Crude $71.91 -0.62%
Louisiana Light $76.41 +4.03%
Bonny Light $78.62 -2.84%
Mars US $72.90 -1.51%
Gasoline $2.140 -1.10%
Natural Gas $4.101 -0.89%
The OPEC+ alliance has decided to increase oil production by more than previously estimated starting in May, benefiting from improved market indicators and increased global demand for crude, according to an official statement posted on its website after a virtual meeting held today.
The alliance said it will increase production by approximately 411,000 barrels per day, equivalent to three months of planned increases, exceeding the previously planned increase for May alone, with flexibility to adjust or halt this rate depending on market developments.
The surprise decision deepened the slide in oil prices, which had already begun following US President Donald Trump's announcement on Wednesday of historic tariffs.
While lower oil prices may ease inflationary pressures on central banks, they also highlight broader concerns about growth prospects, which have prompted companies across the sector to lower their forecasts in recent weeks.
In the latest warning about the impact of these tariffs on growth, International Monetary Fund Managing (IMF) Director Kristalina Georgieva considered the reciprocal US tariffs a significant risk to the global economy, especially given the slowdown in growth.
In a statement, she urged avoiding steps that could further damage the economic recovery, urging the US and its trading partners to work together to resolve tensions and reduce uncertainty.
"The perfect mix of pessimism has prevailed in Washington and Vienna," Bloomberg quoted Tamas Varga, an analyst at brokerage PVM Oil Associates Ltd. He added, "Reciprocal tariffs on virtually all of the United States' major trading partners are justifiably raising fears of recession and possibly stagflation. Economic growth and oil demand growth are being negatively impacted."
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Egypt Independent
3 hours ago
- Egypt Independent
Gaza and Ukraine will show whether Trump is a true leader or just a bully
Donald Trump looked like the last king of Scotland. To the skirl of bagpipes, the president welcomed Keir Starmer to one of his Scottish golfing palaces in his mother's ancestral homeland. The prime minister flew in Monday as a guest and a supplicant in a corner of his own United Kingdom. Starmer was a mere extra as Trump held court in a mind-bending news conference that rollicked through topics like his hatred of wind power, the window frames in his ballroom and Windsor Castle. Trump capped his protocol-reversing day by flying the PM across Scotland on Air Force One to another of his exclusive clubs, in another ostentatious show of US power optics. A day earlier, the top EU official, Ursula von der Leyen, matched Starmer's effusiveness after arriving at Trump's windswept Turnberry links for an audience bearing a trade deal that some Europeans blasted as a surrender. Events in America's new temporary capital in southwest Scotland were an object lesson in how Trump flexes his indomitable personality and relentless sense of others' weaknesses to impose personal power and rack up big wins for himself. US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrive at Trump MacLeod House & Lodge in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, after flying on the Marine One helicopter on months into his second presidency, Trump is getting exactly what he wants on many fronts. He's destroying the global free trading system by lining up framework trade deals that enshrine one of his longtime obsessions — tariffs. He sent US stealth bombers around the world to bombard Iran's nuclear program. And he's wrung promises of a vast increase in military spending from NATO members. It's the same at home. Trump has bullied Congress into submission. He's imposing his ideology on great universities. He's forced private law firms to do pro bono work for him and he's weaponizing the justice system against his foes. And he's effectively shut down the southern border and halted undocumented migration. This is the kind of 'winning' that eluded him in his first term and that he promised his MAGA supporters would reach such a volume they'd grow tired of winning. Yet Trump is such a polarizing president — one whose 'wins' are sometimes more theater than substance — that his current streak bears close examination. Internationally, it is fair to ask: Is Trump racking up victories for the American people or for himself? Is his coercive power over allies and smaller states a sign of strength or the behavior of a schoolyard tough guy? And what will be the consequence of his wins in the long term — years after his zest for a headline proclaiming a great 'deal' has passed? The alliances that made the US a superpower seem especially vulnerable in this regard. The true global tests of Trump's power If Trump is really a dominant global force, the proof will come in his handling of three critical issues highlighted on his trip to Scotland: a wrenching famine in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and trade. Trump made surprising tonal shifts Monday on Gaza and Ukraine. Responding to hideous video of malnourished children in Gaza, Trump contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that there's no starvation in the enclave after months of Israeli bombardments. 'We have to get the kids fed,' Trump said, promising to set up food distribution centers to alleviate the growing famine. But he offered few details about how this would work in a war zone where civilians have been killed lining up for food. He also ignored US complicity in the aid crisis following difficulties faced by a Washington-backed Israeli program that bypassed UN experts. Palestinians gather to receive food from a charity kitchen amid a hunger crisis in Gaza City on Monday. Khamis Al-Rifi/Reuters Perhaps Trump's commitment is a genuine shift and could lead to him undercutting Netanyahu, a leader who has repeatedly rebuffed US pressure and damaged the president's wish to be seen as a peacemaker. It could be, that as happened after chemical weapons attacks in Syria in 2017, Trump was truly moved by heartbreaking footage of suffering children. But a president with a sharp political sense may have also calculated that growing outrage toward Israel meant he might end up sharing the blame for the horror. The cynic's case is supported by his previous suggestion that Gazans should leave to allow the creation of a 'Middle East Riviera' beach resort. And Trump's evisceration of USAID means the dying Gazan kids will be far from alone. Will Trump follow through on his Putin rebukes? The second test of Trump's global power will come over Ukraine. The president on Monday vented growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin's refusal to accept his generous suggestions for a peace deal in Ukraine, capping his previous 50-day deadline for action to 10 or 12 days. 'We have such nice conversations, such respectful and nice conversations. And then people die the following night,' Trump said. If Trump really switches from buttering up Putin to punishing him, he could hurt Russia, especially with secondary sanctions that bankroll the war by being Moscow's oil exports. But there's a huge problem: That would require the US to directly take on powers such as India and China, risking global economic blowback. Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a forum in Moscow on July 3. Getty Images With Trump in Scotland, his trade negotiators were in Sweden holding high-level talks with China that could yield another 'win' for his tariff strategy and potentially the spectacle of a presidential visit to Beijing this year. Is he really ready to risk all this for Ukraine — a nation that he thinks has already had too much US aid? A robust move against Putin in the coming days that could also rebound against Xi — even against Trump's own political interests — would show the president is willing not just to lord it over Europeans but to stand up to the most ruthless leaders. Failing to take such action would validate critics who see Trump's irritation at Putin as less about Ukraine's plight than about the embarrassment about the president's Nobel Prize campaign being thwarted by his erstwhile hero. Trump's EU trade win may turn out to be less than it seems On the surface, Trump pulled off a genuine win against the European Union in the trade deal and for his 'America First' trade policies, which he views as reversing decades of partners taking advantage of the United States in the interest of reviving American manufacturing. The EU chose not to use its own economic might to inflict pain on the US economy. Instead, it accepted a deal that will see the imposition of a 15% tariff on European exports. The backlash was swift. 'An alliance of free peoples, gathered to assert their values and defend their interests, resolves to submission,' French Prime Minister François Bayrou wrote on X. But others saw pragmatism rather than capitulation, because it's becoming clear that tariffs are existential for Trump — as shown by similar levies included in recent trade deals announced with Japan and the Philippines. Europe's already-sluggish economic growth will take a hit. But a trade war would be worse. US President Donald Trump shakes hands with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Turnberry, Scotland, on Sunday. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images 'Those who expect a hurricane are grateful for a storm,' said Wolfgang Große Entrup, the head of the German Chemical Industry Association. Trump's estimation that the EU agreement was 'the biggest deal ever' is hyperbole. The short framework is far from a detailed agreement, which may take years to negotiate and thousands of pages to spell out. This all looks like Trump's classic habit of spinning a small breakthrough as a gargantuan win. The framework announcement by the White House is thin and full of conditional language. On closer inspection, it's not clear exactly what the EU has given away. There is no clear indication that the Europeans have ceded to US demands to accept its hormone-treated beef or to ease regulation of Silicon Valley firms. European leaders are playing a long game. A trade war with Trump might have destroyed their efforts to prevent him rupturing the transatlantic alliance, which included a pledge for NATO members to raise defense spending to 5% by 2035 during his last transatlantic trip. It may also not be a coincidence that Trump's change of tack on Ukraine and Gaza — which brought him closer to two critical European foreign policy priorities — came hours after the EU concessions in the trade agreement. Trump's wins are in the open. Europeans are more subtle. Starmer is following the same gameplay. His willingness to check his political dignity at the door each time he meets Trump has yielded a friendship with the president — and a tariff rate of 10%, better than that imposed on the EU. How Trump's push for wins could drain US power Trump's binary view of a life in pursuit of wins means that he must always come out on top and those on the other side must lose. Eventually, this is bound to alienate some of America's best friends. This doesn't matter in the 'America First' creed, which seeks to leverage US might against smaller nations whether they are allies or adversaries. But US alliances and its leadership of like-minded democracy were the key to Washington's power since the end of World War II. And sometimes the country needs its friends — like after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Trump is burning through American soft power at a frightening rate. And as some of America's traditional allies consider closer ties to China, there are clear signs that Trump's transactional approach could wreak long-term damage. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, former Bush administration foreign policy official Kori Schake writes that the Trump team is hastening a future in which countries 'opt out of the existing US-led international order or construct a new one that would be antagonistic to American interests.' And it's not even clear that many of Trump's wins will bring greater security at home. After all, by punishing Europe with a 15% tariff on its goods, Trump has imposed yet another consumption tax on Americans. 'It's a number that will hurt both the US and EU economies,' Fredrik Persson, president of BusinessEurope, told CNN's Richard Quest.
Al-Ahram Weekly
20 hours ago
- Al-Ahram Weekly
China hopes for 'reciprocity' at trade talks with US in Stockholm - Economy
Chinese and US economic officials met for talks in Stockholm on Monday, with Beijing saying it wanted to see "reciprocity" in its trade with the United States. Talks in the Swedish capital between the world's top two economies are expected to last two days. They came a day after US President Donald Trump reached a deal that will see imports from the European Union taxed at 15 percent and the clock ticking down for many countries to reach deals or face high US tariffs. Beijing said on Monday it hoped the two sides could hold talks in the spirit of "mutual respect and reciprocity". Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Beijing sought to "enhance consensus through dialogue and communication, reduce misunderstandings, strengthen cooperation and promote the stable, healthy and sustainable development of China-US relations". For dozens of trading partners, failing to strike an agreement in the coming days means they could face significant tariff hikes on exports to the United States come Friday, August 1. The steeper rates, threatened against partners like Brazil and India, would raise the duties their products face from a "baseline" of 10 percent now to levels up to 50 percent. Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have already effectively raised duties on US imports to levels not seen since the 1930s, according to data from The Budget Lab research centre at Yale University. For now, all eyes are on discussions between Washington and Beijing as a delegation including US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent meets a Chinese team led by Vice Premier He Lifeng in Sweden. In Stockholm, Chinese and US flags were raised in front of Rosenbad, the seat of the Swedish government. While both countries in April imposed tariffs on each other's products that reached triple-digit levels, US duties this year have temporarily been lowered to 30 percent and China's countermeasures slashed to 10 percent. But the 90-day truce, instituted after talks in Geneva in May, is set to expire on August 12. Since the Geneva meeting, the two sides have convened in London to iron out disagreements. China progress? "There seems to have been a fairly significant shift in (US) administration thinking on China since particularly the London talks," said Emily Benson, head of strategy at Minerva Technology Futures. "The mood now is much more focused on what's possible to achieve, on warming relations where possible and restraining any factors that could increase tensions," she told AFP. Talks with China have not produced a deal but Benson said both countries have made progress, with certain rare earth and semiconductor flows restarting. "Secretary Bessent has also signalled that he thinks a concrete outcome will be to delay the 90-day tariff pause," she said. "That's also promising, because it indicates that something potentially more substantive is on the horizon." The South China Morning Post, citing sources on both sides, reported Sunday that Washington and Beijing are expected to extend their tariff pause by another 90 days. Trump has announced pacts so far with the European Union, Britain, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines, although details have been sparse. An extension of the US-China deal to keep tariffs at reduced levels "would show that both sides see value in continuing talks", said Thibault Denamiel, a fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. US-China Business Council president Sean Stein said the market was not anticipating a detailed readout from Stockholm: "What's more important is the atmosphere coming out." "The business community is optimistic that the two presidents will meet later this year, hopefully in Beijing," he told AFP. "It's clear that on both sides, the final decision-maker is going to be the president." For others, the prospect of higher US tariffs and few details from fresh trade deals mark "a far cry from the ideal scenario", said Denamiel. But they show some progress, particularly with partners Washington has signalled are on its priority list like the EU, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea. The EU unveiled a pact with Washington on Sunday while Seoul is rushing to strike an agreement, after Japan and the Philippines already reached the outlines of deals. Breakthroughs have been patchy since Washington promised a flurry of agreements after unveiling, and then swiftly postponing, tariff hikes targeting dozens of economies in April. Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
See - Sada Elbalad
a day ago
- See - Sada Elbalad
Silver Extends Gains, Supported by Supply Deficits and Rising Industrial Demand
Waleed Farouk Silver prices in local markets recorded significant gains last week, amid global volatility after spot prices touched their highest levels in more than 14 years before retreating due to signs of easing trade tensions. In Egypt, 800-grade silver opened trading at EGP 52 per gram, climbed to EGP 54, and closed the week at EGP 53. The price for 999-grade silver reached EGP 66, while 925-grade silver stood at EGP 61, and a silver pound coin (925) was priced at approximately EGP 488. Globally, spot silver started the week at $38.11 per ounce, peaked at $39.91—the highest since 2011—before closing at $38. Silver came close to breaching the $40-per-ounce threshold, but a sudden U.S. announcement regarding an imminent trade deal with the European Union triggered a rapid pullback. Domestic Market Dynamics Local gold markets experienced a modest recovery in sales during Egypt's high school exam results season, as many families purchased silver coins and bars as gifts. Additionally, individual investors increasingly turned to silver as an alternative investment to gold, which has reached record price levels. Trade Developments and Monetary Policy Impact The silver rally coincides with an approaching trade deadline on August 1, as several nations—including Mexico, Canada, and the EU—work to finalize agreements aimed at mitigating tariff impacts, particularly on major silver-producing countries. Such deals could stabilize supply chains and prevent shortages that might otherwise push prices sharply higher. Analysts suggest that once these agreements are finalized, the U.S. Federal Reserve may move toward interest rate cuts. This could place additional pressure on the U.S. dollar, which has already lost about 11% of its value since the start of the year. Should the Dollar Index fall to 92—its level during former President Donald Trump's term, representing another 5% decline—it could become a strong catalyst for precious metals, with projections pointing to silver potentially reaching $50 per ounce and gold $4,000 per ounce within the next 12 months. Market Trends and Structural Drivers Silver prices have risen 29% in Egypt since the beginning of 2025, adding EGP 12 to the price of 800-grade silver. On the global stage, silver has surged by 31%, from $29 to $38 per ounce, outperforming most other metals during the same period. This growth is attributed to several factors, including expectations that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates unchanged in its upcoming meeting, growing concerns over a global economic slowdown, persistent supply chain disruptions, and increasing industrial demand—particularly from the solar energy and technology sectors. Gold-Silver Ratio and Valuation Perspective The gold-to-silver ratio has fallen to 86, down from over 100 in April, while its historical average ranges between 50 and 60. This decline suggests that silver remains undervalued relative to gold. Analysts note that if the ratio were to revert to its historical mean without a significant change in gold prices, silver could exceed $63 per ounce—a potential 65% gain from current levels. Future Outlook and Historical Context Adjusted for inflation, historical data shows that silver's peak price in 1980 would equal about $197 per ounce today, while the 2011 rally corresponds to roughly $71. This indicates that current levels around $38–$39 remain relatively low, leaving room for further appreciation if supportive market conditions persist. Silver is regaining its role as a trusted safe-haven asset amid an environment marked by heightened geopolitical tensions, inflationary pressures, and financial market volatility. Historically, like gold, silver has served as a store of value during crises but offers the additional advantages of greater accessibility and affordability for retail investors. 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