2025-06-19 19:58
PM Carney announces measures to support steel, aluminum firms Changes reciprocity on procurement rules for federal projects US has imposed 50% tariffs on imports of steel, aluminum OTTAWA, June 19 (Reuters) - Canada could increase counter-tariffs on U.S.-produced steel and aluminum if it does not reach a broader trade deal with President Donald Trump within 30 days, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday. Trump increased import duties on steel and aluminum to 50% from 25% earlier this month, prompting industry calls for an official response. Trump's move could hurt Canada, which is the largest seller of the metals to the U.S. Sign up here. Carney said on Monday he had agreed with Trump that the two nations should try to wrap up a new economic and security deal by July 21. "Canada will adjust its existing counter-tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum products on July 21 to levels consistent with progress made in the broader trading agreement with the United States," Carney told a press conference. Carney refrained from immediately matching Trump's June tariff hike, saying he wanted to see progress on talks to create a new economic and security relationship. On March 13, Canada imposed 25% retaliatory tariffs on a list of steel products worth C$12.6 billion and aluminum products worth C$3 billion. As part of Thursday's announcement, Canada will implement new procurement rules, under which Canadian producers and trading partners who have tariff-free reciprocal access can compete for federal procurements of steel and aluminum. Carney said Canada would establish new tariff-rate quotas of 100% of 2024 levels on imports of steel products from non-free trade agreement partners "to stabilize the domestic market and prevent harmful trade diversion." Canada ships over 90% of its total steel and aluminum exports to the U.S. and consumes about a fifth of U.S. exports of steel and 50% of its aluminum exports, according to the Royal Bank of Canada, highlighting the critical metals trade between the two countries. Under Carney, Canada has also lined up an array of projects to build infrastructure, starting from defense, oil and gas pipelines to doubling housing capacity all of which will require tons of steel and aluminum. "We are united in working on all forms of support for the industry... that starts with buying Canadian steel and aluminum for federal projects," Carney said while addressing questions from the media. As part of the new measures the government will also favor the use of Canadian steel and aluminum in Canadian-made products and will create a task force to monitor how the steel and aluminum markets are evolving under the tariff regime. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-address-unfair-trade-steel-aluminum-sectors-says-carney-2025-06-19/
2025-06-19 19:10
June 19 (Reuters) - An escalation of the Iran-Israeli hostilities could keep Brent oil prices trading about 15% to 20% above pre-conflict levels if the war disrupts 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil exports, analysts at Citibank said on Thursday. "This implies Brent prices should be in the $75 to $78/bbl range," Citi said in a note. Prices had been hovering around $65 per barrel in May. Sign up here. Brent crude futures were up $1.48, or 1.9%, to $78.18 a barrel by 1230 ET on Thursday, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude for July was up $1.72, or 2.3%, at $76.86. Separately, JP Morgan said in a note that in the most extreme case of a broader regional conflagration that includes the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, it estimates that oil prices could surge to $120-$130 per barrel. The Iran-Israel conflict has raised fears of potential supply disruptions in the Middle East, a key oil-producing region, pushing crude prices higher as traders react to the growing geopolitical risk. Iran is OPEC's third-largest producer, extracting about 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil. According to Citi, a disruption of about 3 million bpd over a multi-month period could push prices to $90 bbl. Any closure of the Strait of Hormuz could cause a sharp price spike, but Citi believes it would be brief as efforts would focus on a quick reopening. Iranian oil export disruptions may have a smaller impact on oil prices than expected due to falling exports and reduced Chinese purchases as prices are higher now, it said. "Production elsewhere globally may have risen sufficiently to offset the disruption impact, particularly if the production disruption was expected," Citi noted. Increased supply from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could also mitigate the impact of potential Iranian oil export disruptions, it added. On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs noted that it estimates a geopolitical risk premium of around $10 per barrel following the rise in Brent prices to $76-77 per barrel, while Barclays said that if Iranian exports are reduced by half, crude prices could rise to $85 per barrel and that prices could move past $100 in the "worst-case" scenario of a wider conflagration. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/citi-sees-oil-prices-75-78bbl-if-war-disrupts-11-mln-bpd-irans-oil-exports-2025-06-19/
2025-06-19 18:39
The country meets euro adoption criteria, including inflation and budget deficit limits Bulgarians sceptical about euro adoption, fearing price increases Bulgaria's euro adoption will leave six EU countries outside euro zone BRUSSELS, June 19 (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers recommended on Thursday that Bulgaria become the 21st member of the euro zone starting January 1, 2026, backing earlier positive assessments of the country's readiness from the European Commission and the European Central Bank. "The Eurogroup agreed today that Bulgaria fulfils all the necessary conditions to adopt the euro," Paschal Donohoe, who chairs meetings of euro zone finance ministers, told a press conference. Sign up here. The recommendation will now be formally adopted by all 27 EU finance ministers on Friday and then by EU leaders on June 26. The exchange rate at which the Bulgarian lev will be converted into euro will be set by EU finance ministers at their meeting in early July, giving Bulgaria six months to prepare the technical transition for the start of the year. Bulgaria has been striving to switch its lev to the euro since it joined the European Union in 2007. But after such a long wait, many Bulgarians have lost their initial enthusiasm, with 50% now sceptical about the euro, according to a Eurobarometer poll in May. Some Bulgarians fear the currency switch will drive up prices. CRITERIA To get the positive recommendation, Bulgaria had to meet the inflation criterion, which says that the euro candidate cannot have consumer inflation higher than 1.5 percentage points above the three best EU performers. In April, the best performers were France with 0.9%, Cyprus with 1.4% and Denmark with 1.5%, which put Bulgaria with its 2.8% just within the limit. The euro candidate country also cannot be under the EU's disciplinary budget procedure for running a deficit in excess of 3% of GDP. Bulgaria meets this criterion with a budget deficit of 3% in 2024 and 2.8% expected in 2025. The country's public debt of 24.1% of GDP in 2024 and 25.1% expected in 2025 is well below the maximum level of 60%, and its long-term interest rate on bonds is well within the two-percentage-point margin above the rate at which the three best inflation performers borrow. Finally, Bulgaria had to prove it had a stable exchange rate by staying within a 15% margin on either side of a central parity rate in the Exchange Rate Mechanism II. This was easily done because Bulgaria has been running a currency board that fixed the lev to the euro at 1.95583 since the start of the euro currency in 1999. Bulgaria's euro adoption will come three years after the last euro zone expansion, when Croatia joined the single currency grouping at the start of 2023. The accession of Bulgaria into the euro zone will leave only six of the 27 EU countries outside the single currency area: Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Denmark. None of them have any immediate plans to adopt the euro either for political reasons or because they do not meet the required economic criteria. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/euro-zone-finance-ministers-recommend-bulgaria-adopt-euro-2026-2025-06-19/
2025-06-19 18:33
CAIRO, June 19 (Reuters) - Israel has resumed limited natural gas exports from surplus supplies, the country's Energy Ministry said on Thursday, nearly a week after shutting down two key offshore fields as Israel and Iran waged an air battle. A ministry spokesperson told Reuters that exports are now resuming "from surpluses, after domestic needs are met." Sign up here. An energy ministry source said most of the limited exported gas is currently flowing to Jordan, and only "tiny volumes" reached Egypt this week. Egyptian fertilizer producers, who were forced to halt operations due to the supply disruption, told Reuters they have yet to receive any gas but expect flows to resume next week. The Egyptian Petroleum Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Following military escalation in the region, Israel halted exports on June 13 after closing the Leviathan field, operated by Chevron and the Karish field operated by Energean. Only the Tamar field has remained operational, supplying mainly domestic demand. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said on Wednesday that exports would only resume once military authorities deemed it safe. "I don't want to use our strategic storage, so therefore, I needed to cut exports," he told Reuters. Egypt, which has increasingly relied on Israeli gas since a domestic production decline in 2022, is scrambling to compensate for the supply gap. The country has ramped up fuel oil use in power plants and has signed deals to import over $8 billion worth of liquefied natural gas, while preparing additional floating regasification units. Israeli gas typically accounts for up to 60% of Egypt's total gas imports and around a fifth of its total consumption, according to data from the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI). https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/israel-restarts-limited-gas-exports-amid-ongoing-conflict-egypt-still-waiting-2025-06-19/
2025-06-19 17:04
ABUJA, June 19 (Reuters) - The Nigerian Navy has arrested 76 vessels and at least 242 suspects in anti-oil theft operations, and destroyed more than 800 illegal refining sites during a two-year crackdown, it said on Thursday. Rampant oil theft from pipelines and wells has crippled Nigeria's oil industry in recent years, damaging government finances and stifling exports. Sign up here. Since June 2023, naval authorities have seized around 171,000 barrels of crude and millions of litres of illegally refined fuels from criminal networks, Chief of Naval Staff Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla said at a briefing in the capital Abuja. The navy also began verifying oil cargoes loaded at Nigeria's five major export terminals in January to combat oil theft at its source, Ogalla said. The navy has acquired patrol boats, three new ships and three AW 139 Trekker helicopters. It is also building two additional seaward defence boats and will take delivery of two 76-meter offshore patrol vessels from Dearsan Shipyard in Turkey. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nigerian-navy-cracks-down-oil-theft-arrests-76-vessels-two-years-2025-06-19/
2025-06-19 15:31
Norway delivers surprise 25 bps rate cut Diverging central banks another headwind for markets New status quo in markets could be era of central bank surprises LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) - Investor unease about an increasingly uncertain environment is rising, as Norway's shock rate cut on Thursday highlights how U.S. tariffs, Middle East conflict and a shaky dollar make global monetary policy and inflation even harder to predict. Norway's crown slid roughly 1% against the dollar and the euro , in a sign of how unexpected the move was. And Switzerland, which cut borrowing costs to 0% on Thursday, confounded some expectations among traders for a return to negative rates in the deflation-hit nation, as its central bank warned of a cloudy global outlook. Sign up here. Just a day earlier the U.S. Federal Reserve kept rates on hold and chair Jerome Powell said "no one" had conviction on the rate path ahead. The conclusion for markets: monetary policy uncertainty is one more headwind to navigate against a backdrop of geopolitical and trade risks. Global stocks pulled away from recent peaks, a gauge of expected volatility in European equities (.V2TX) , opens new tab touched a two-month high as stocks across the region fell and government bonds, usually geopolitical risk havens, sold off. "We're at a moment of considerable policy and macro uncertainty," said BlueBay chief investment officer at RBC Global Asset Management Mark Dowding. "We can't see a clear trend on interest rates," he added, which meant he was holding back from active market bets across the group's investment portfolios. Volatility was set to rise, some investors said, because a choppy dollar and oil prices whipped around by geopolitics meant that central banks were far less able to provide markets and investors a clear route map for the future. "You cannot just take your cues from the central banks anymore as they are facing a harder job of reading the economy themselves," T.S. Lombard director of European and global macro Davide Oneglia said. BROKEN MODELS Rate-cutting European central banks are not just diverging from the Fed, which is grappling with the inflationary risks of President Donald Trump's tariffs. They are also struggling to navigate a new era where the dollar , the lynchpin of world trade, commodity prices and asset valuations, has turned weaker and more volatile under trade war stress and government debt anxiety. "That's a massive, massive fundamental shift in global markets that everyone is trying to assess," Monex Europe head of Macro Research Nick Rees said. "All of those standard economic rules of thumb we use for forecasting are completely broken right now." The dollar is down almost 9% against other major currencies this year but has risen following the outbreak of a war between Israel and Iran. European Central Bank policymaker Francois Villeroy de Galhau said on Thursday the ECB might have to adapt its rate cut plans if oil price volatility was long-lasting. The new status quo in markets could well be an era of central bank surprises that create rapid shifts in the market narrative, asset pricing and volatility trends, analysts said. "We're getting into this next cycle in which variables are much more volatile, because, rather than (monetary policy) being just easily predictable, events just take over and policy and human factors, as we now know with Donald Trump, play an important role," Oneglia said. Norway's surprise cut came because the crown was a "runaway top currency" of the trade-war era, added Societe Generale's head of FX strategy Kit Juckes. With investors chasing around the world to identify stores of wealth that are not U.S. dollars, meanwhile, the Swiss franc has soared, cutting the costs of imports and pushing the economy into deflation. On Thursday, the franc rose against the dollar as traders saw the SNB's cut as too small to keep deflation at bay. Ninety One multi-asset head John Stopford said the hazard risk was rising for global stocks and that options products that aim to offer protection from incoming volatility looked fairly cheap. He was buying bonds issued in nations where inflation and rates could come down materially, such as New Zealand, but was negative on longer-dated U.S. Treasuries and German Bunds where economic uncertainty was higher and government borrowing was likely to rise. Global stocks (.MIWD00000PUS) , opens new tab remain almost 20% above their April trough, after investors relaxed about tariffs. Stopford said there was more to worry about in the short term. "The stock market feels like it's a thatched house in a hot country with a fire hazard risk, and people aren't charging much to insure the house," Stopford added. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/oil-war-tariffs-tear-up-markets-central-bank-roadmap-2025-06-19/
