US President Donald Trump on Saturday ramped up threats to use tariffs to protect the US energy industry from a historic glut of oil as efforts to forge a global deal to cut output appeared to lose momentum.
Trump said at a White House press briefing that he would use tariffs if needed to protect the domestic oil industry, even as he predicted that Saudi Arabia and Russia would come to an agreement to cut output and stem the rout in prices.
However, such a deal looked a bit further from reach at the weekend after a diplomatic row between Saudi Arabia and Russia. A gathering of OPEC+ members and other producers scheduled for today was pushed back to give more time for negotiations.
Saudi Arabia, which last month launched a price war with Russia after OPEC+ talks broke down, has made clear that it would not cut production unless other producers — including the US — also hold back supply.
However, Trump on Saturday said that “I don’t care about OPEC,” a “cartel” he has opposed all his life.
The prospect of a deal to reduce the massive glut of oil caused by the COVID-19 lockdown last week sent benchmark oil futures to a record gain. Oil prices have fallen about 50 percent this year as the pandemic has knocked out as much as one-third of global oil demand.
In the latest maneuver in the price war, Saudi Arabia yesterday postponed its monthly price-setting event for exported oil.
Saudi Aramco’s official selling prices for next month could be pushed to tomorrow or Thursday, a person familiar with the situation said.
The OPEC meeting has been tentatively rescheduled for Thursday.
The move allows the company to have a better idea of how negotiations are going before setting the prices that are its key weapon in its war with Russia for market share.
Last month, it also postponed the event in the midst of wrangling at OPEC+ and responded to the breakdown in those talks with a historic price cut.
On the idea of slapping tariffs on foreign oil, the US oil industry is split. Some independent shale producers — who have been hardest hit by the market slump — are in support, while refiners and large integrated companies are typically opposed.
The American Petroleum Institute, which helped arrange a meeting with Trump on Friday, has argued that tariffs would inject uncertainty into an already rattled global marketplace.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained