2025-03-20 11:32
BEIJING, March 20 (Reuters) - Chinese steelmaker HBIS group signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with iron ore mining giant Vale (VALE3.SA) , opens new tab to promote decarbonisation in the steel value chain, both companies said on Thursday. Both parties will jointly identify optimal burden solutions for low-carbon transition and exploring the feasibility of using the Tecnored furnace to treat solid waste and extract valuable metals, they said. Sign up here. "The signing of the MoU on the cooperation for decarbonisation of the steel industry value chain represents a joint action by two major international enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to address climate change," HBIS chairman Liu Jian said in a statement on the company's WeChat account. Both HBIS and Vale aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Liu also hopes both sides will explore breakthrough decarbonisation technologies such as circular economy, hydrogen metallurgy and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS). Steelmakers across the world have sought cooperation with upstream mining giants for green transition in the hard-to-abate steel sector that has contributed to 7% of global carbon dioxide emission. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/chinas-hbis-collaborates-with-vale-advance-steel-decarbonisation-2025-03-20/
2025-03-20 11:32
Russia and U.S. to meet in Jeddah soon Kremlin says Black Sea shipping on the agenda Trump seeking to kickstart peace talks in three-year war MOSCOW, March 20 (Reuters) - Russia and the U.S. will discuss ways to ensure safe shipping in the Black Sea at talks on a possible Ukrainian peace settlement in the Saudi city of Jeddah over coming days, the Kremlin said on Thursday. After Russian forces made gains in 2024, President Donald Trump reversed U.S. policy on the war, launching bilateral talks with Moscow and suspending military assistance to Ukraine, demanding that it take steps to end the conflict. Sign up here. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff earlier this week said U.S.-Russian talks would take place on Sunday in Jeddah. But when asked by Reuters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they might instead be early next week. "We expect that negotiations will continue at the expert level and will continue in the coming days," Peskov said, adding that Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov had spoken to Mike Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, on Wednesday. Peskov said that when Putin and Trump spoke by telephone on Tuesday, they had discussed the "Black Sea Initiative" Turkey and the United Nations helped mediate the so called Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal struck in July 2022 that allowed the safe export of nearly 33 million metric tons of Ukraine grain across the Black Sea despite the war. Russia withdrew from the agreement after a year, complaining that its own food and fertiliser exports faced serious obstacles. "We fulfilled all the conditions then, but the conditions in relation to us were not fulfilled," Peskov said. The White House, in its March 18 statement on the Putin-Trump call, said the leaders agreed to technical negotiation on the implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, a full ceasefire and permanent peace. The World Bank's global commodities outlook from April 2024 says that despite the Black Sea shipping risks, both Russia and Ukraine were shipping grain to global markets without major problems. It also said the collapse of the Black Sea Grain Initiative had a minimal fallout. The bank's latest report from October 2024 does not mention Black Sea shipping risks. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West in six decades. The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a Russia-friendly president was toppled in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces then fighting Ukraine's armed forces in the east. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-us-discuss-black-sea-shipping-ukraine-peace-talks-jeddah-kremlin-says-2025-03-20/
2025-03-20 11:29
BEIJING, March 20 (Reuters) - China's giant steel industry is facing mounting pressure on exports this year as it faces another wave of trade frictions from U.S. President Donald Trump's new tariffs. Trump announced plans earlier this month to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports into the United States, effective from March 12. Sign up here. Here is the list of countries and regions that have unveiled measures or plans after Trump's fresh proposals on tariffs. VIETNAM Vietnam announced last Friday that it would impose a temporary anti-dumping levy of up to 27.83% on some steel products from China, effective from March 7. Though Vietnam launched the anti-dumping investigation last July, the announcement took the market by surprise because it came earlier than expected. Vietnam was China's largest steel export destination in 2024, accounting for 11.5%, or 12.77 million metric tons, of China's total steel exports which hit a nine-year high. SOUTH KOREA South Korea's industry ministry said last week it had provisionally decided to impose up to 38% tariffs on Chinese steel plate imports after an investigation into alleged dumping of the steel product used in shipbuilding and construction. Some 7.4%, or 8.19 million tons of China's steel exports flowed to South Korea last year, making it China's second-largest steel export market. INDIA India has recommended a temporary tax of 12% on some steel products for 200 days, known locally as safeguard duty, in a bid to curb imports. China's steel exports to India accounted for just 2.7% of its total last year, although the South Asian nation's finished steel imports from China touched their highest levels in at least seven years during the first nine months of the financial year that began in April. EUROPEAN UNION The European Union will tighten steel import quotas to reduce inflows by a further 15% from April, in a move aimed at preventing cheap steel flooding the European market after Washington imposed new tariffs. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/trumps-new-tariffs-stir-wave-trade-frictions-against-chinese-steel-2025-02-27/
2025-03-20 11:27
ZURICH, March 20 (Reuters) - Financial stability would be best served by UBS (UBSG.S) , opens new tab fully capitalising its foreign subsidiaries, Swiss National Bank Vice Chairman Antoine Martin said on Thursday. Martin was responding to a question in a press conference about whether making UBS fully capitalise its foreign units could prompt the bank to leave Switzerland. Sign up here. He said Switzerland was an attractive place for banks and noted the SNB had a mandate to uphold financial stability. "From the perspective of financial stability, a complete deduction of foreign participation is the best solution," Martin told reporters, noting the matter was up to the bank. "But we don't comment on what the banks would do." https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/financial-stability-best-served-by-full-capitalisation-ubs-foreign-units-snb-2025-03-20/
2025-03-20 11:26
BERLIN, March 20 (Reuters) - Germany could save more than 300 billion euros ($326.49 billion) by 2035 by implementing the energy transition more efficiently, according to a study from the Boston Consulting Group and the country's BDI industry association released on Thursday. Germany is expected to spend hundreds of billions of euros on its transition towards greener energy sources in the coming years, with the goal of carbon-neutrality by 2045. At the same time, Berlin faces pressure from industry to bring down stubbornly high energy costs. Sign up here. The BDI study calculated the savings based on current plans, which are expected to cost 1.57 trillion euros over the next 10 years in operation, expansion and maintenance of the energy system. According to the study, investments currently planned in renewables, power grids and hydrogen far exceed foreseeable demand. This would result in avoidable additional costs. At the same time, planning in many places relies on expensive solutions such as underground cables instead of overhead lines. "With better coordination and planning, the energy transition could become more than 20% cheaper over the next 10 years – while simultaneously reducing emissions," said BCG partner Jens Burchardt. The costs of the German electricity system have increased by around 70% since 2010 and further increases are foreseeable, the lobby said. Gas prices are five times higher, and electricity prices up to 2.5 times higher than those of international competitors. A number of factors contribute to high energy prices in Germany, including the costly expansion of renewable energies and a drop-off in gas imports from Russia following the Ukraine war. To replace those Russian supplies, Germany boosted imports from the United States and other suppliers in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which can cost multiple times more than gas supplied via pipeline. ($1 = 0.9189 euros) https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-energy-transition-could-be-300-bln-euros-cheaper-with-more-efficiency-2025-03-20/
2025-03-20 11:24
Rebels take strategic town of Walikale Rebel leader says only direct talks with Congo can end conflict Congo and Rwanda leaders called for ceasefire on Tuesday GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo, March 20 (Reuters) - The leader of Rwandan-backed M23 rebels in eastern Congo said on Thursday that a call by Kinshasa and Kigali for an immediate ceasefire "doesn't concern us" as his forces pushed deeper into Congolese territory by capturing the strategic town of Walikale. Walikale is the farthest west the rebels have reached in a advance that had already overrun eastern Congo's two largest cities since January. Sign up here. The town of 15,000 people fell after fighting on Wednesday between the rebels and the army and allied militias, an army spokesperson and local residents said. The conflict, rooted in the fallout from Rwanda's 1994 genocide and competition for mineral riches, is eastern Congo's worst since a 1998-2003 war that drew in multiple neighbouring countries and resulted in millions of deaths. With troops from Congo, Rwanda and Burundi having all participated in fighting this year, a conflict that has simmered for years is evolving into a wider regional war, experts say. Walikale is in an area rich in minerals including tin and lies along a road that links four eastern Congo provinces. Its capture puts the rebels within 400 km (250 miles) of Kisangani, which is the country's fourth-biggest city and has a bustling port at the Congo River's farthest navigable point upstream of the capital Kinshasa. Addressing Walikale residents who had gathered in town on Thursday, an M23 officer repeated an earlier vow by the rebels to march some 1,500 km (930 miles) to Kinshasa. "We are going to leave a small group of our soldiers to provide you security," he said in a video seen by Reuters. "As for us, we are going to continue ... to join our soldiers who are also en route and continue all the way to Kinshasa." Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame had called on Tuesday for an immediate ceasefire after a surprise meeting in Qatar's capital Doha, their first direct talks this year. The leader of the M23 alliance dismissed the appeal, and said his forces were not fighting at Rwanda's behest. "We are Congolese who are fighting for a cause," Corneille Nangaa, head of the Congo River Alliance (AFC), told Reuters in an interview in eastern Congo's biggest city, Goma. "What happened in Doha, as long as we don't know the details, and as long as it doesn't solve our problems, we'll say it doesn't concern us." DIRECT TALKS BETWEEN KINSHASA AND M23? The United Nations and Western governments say Rwanda has been providing arms and troops to the ethnic Tutsi-led M23. Rwanda has denied backing M23 and says its military has been acting in self-defence against Congo's army and a militia founded by perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. Congo and M23 had been expected to have their first direct talks on Tuesday in Angola after Tshisekedi's government reversed its longstanding refusal to speak to the rebels. But M23 pulled out on Monday, blaming European Union sanctions on some of its leaders and Rwandan officials. Analysts say the move showed how emboldened the rebels felt as well as confusion and mistrust around competing peace initiatives by different foreign governments. A statement on Thursday by Angola's foreign ministry expressed "astonishment" about the talks in Qatar, saying: "All efforts to resolve conflicts are welcome, but African problems should have an African solution." Nangaa reiterated demands for direct talks with Kinshasa, saying it was the only way to resolve the conflict. M23 has called for an end to what it says is the persecution of Tutsis in Congo and improvements to national governance. "We are keen on any peaceful solution," he said. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/congos-m23-rebels-enter-walikale-town-centre-extending-westward-push-2025-03-20/
