Romania expects small growth hit from new US trade deal
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Reuters
8 minutes ago
- Reuters
Foreign oil companies in Venezuela await US authorizations, sources say
HOUSTON, July 29 (Reuters) - About a half dozen foreign partners of Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA are awaiting authorizations from the U.S. Treasury and State departments, following talks last week about fresh licenses to allow them to operate in the sanctioned South American country, according to six company sources. The companies' licenses, including a key one for U.S. oil major Chevron (CVX.N), opens new tab, were revoked by President Donald Trump's administration in March over the Venezuelan government's response to migration issues and what Trump said was its lack of progress toward restoring democracy. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said last week that Chevron had informed his government about a fresh authorization to come, and PDVSA began preparations to allocate oil cargoes to its joint-venture partners in coming months, once authorized. But companies including Chevron, Italy's Eni ( opens new tab, Spain's Repsol ( opens new tab, France's Maurel & Prom ( opens new tab and India's Reliance Industries ( opens new tab are still waiting for the licenses, the sources said. Most of the companies are minority stakeholders in key oil and gas projects with PDVSA, while others including Reliance are among Venezuela's largest buyers of oil. In the first quarter this year, before their licenses were canceled, they were responsible for about 40% of the country's total 881,000 barrels per day of exports. Some firms have informed staff and contractors in Venezuela about permits to come, without elaborating on dates or terms, according to two of the sources. Chevron declined to comment specifically on the licenses. The company said it conducts its business globally in compliance with laws and regulations, as well as the U.S. sanctions framework. A spokesperson for Maurel & Prom told Reuters in an email on Tuesday that the firm has not received any license yet. Eni, Repsol, Reliance and PDVSA did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday the U.S. remained firm in its "unwavering support to Venezuela's restoration of democratic order and justice." Rubio had in May blocked a move by U.S. special envoy Richard Grenell to extend the period in which the previous authorizations for oil operations were allowed to wind down. He did not refer to the oil authorizations in Sunday's release. The Treasury Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the licenses. A State Department spokesperson said they would not comment about any specific licenses, but the U.S. government would not allow Maduro's administration to profit from the sale of oil. Chevron has not yet instructed tankers' owners or captains to go to Venezuelan waters for an eventual resumption of oil cargoes, while PDVSA's loading schedules do not show any supplies to its joint-venture partners for July, according to shipping documents and sources.
Reuters
39 minutes ago
- Reuters
Healthcare boosts UK's FTSE 100 as earnings, Fed meeting in focus
July 29 (Reuters) - Britain's FTSE 100 closed higher on Tuesday, led by healthcare shares, as investors assessed mixed corporate updates and awaited the Federal Reserve's next policy decision on Wednesday. The benchmark index (.FTSE), opens new tab rose 0.6%. Healthcare stocks (.FTNMX201030), opens new tab gained 2.2% after AstraZeneca (AZN.L), opens new tab beat second-quarter revenue and profit expectations. Shares of the drugmaker climbed 3.4%. Heavyweight bank stocks (.FTNMX301010), opens new tab advanced 1.5%, tracking gains in European peers. Barclays (BARC.L), opens new tab gained 2.8% after the British lender's first-half profit rose by a better-than-expected 23%. Europe's bank stocks rose to their highest level since September 2008 as investors bet on improved profits and resilience in an industry broadly insulated from tariff turmoil. Precious metal miners (.FTNMX551030), opens new tab led sectoral gains with a 2.4% rise as gold prices steadied after hitting their lowest level since July 9 on Monday. Conversely, chemical stocks (.FTNMX552010), opens new tab lost 5.4%, pressured by Croda International's (CRDA.L), opens new tab 10.4% fall, after the chemical company reported first-half sales below estimates. Industrial miners (.FTNMX551020), opens new tab lost 1.3%, tracking lower copper prices. Glencore (GLEN.L), opens new tab and Anglo American (AAL.L), opens new tab fell 3.4% and 1.6% respectively. Among other individual stocks, Games Workshop (GAW.L), opens new tab surged 5.4% to top the FTSE 100 index, after the miniature wargames maker reported a nearly 30% jump in annual pre-tax profit. The domestically-focused midcap FTSE 250 index (.FTMC), opens new tab closed down 0.7%, pressured by Inchcape's (INCH.L), opens new tab 11.7% fall after the car distributor reported a 4% drop in first-half adjusted pre-tax profit at constant currency. Greggs (GRG.L), opens new tab slipped 4.7% after reporting a 14% fall in first-half profit. On trade, U.S. Commerce chief Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump would make his trade deal decisions this week, even as separate negotiations with China and the European Union continue. U.S. and EU officials were still discussing steel and aluminium tariffs as well as digital services regulations. Trump also flagged a "world tariff" rate of 15% to 20% on Monday for countries that were not negotiating a deal, among the highest rates since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Focus will be on the U.S. central bank's policy meeting, which is expected to leave rates unchanged on Wednesday.
Telegraph
39 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Trump is winning his trade war. Only the Left-wing media refuses to admit it
The deal 'will bring stability. It will bring predictability', said EU President Ursula von der Leyen at Donald Trump's Turnberry golf resort in Scotland on Sunday. 'Stability' and 'predictability' are not words the EU typically employs when discussing anything connected with the US president. But when you lead an economic bloc that has just been comprehensively outmanoeuvred in a trade dispute, forced into a deal that even your own side says favours the US, you could be forgiven for acting out of character. The basic rate of 15 per cent that will now be charged on most European goods entering the US was perhaps not coincidentally the same rate that Trump had extracted from Japan in a similar deal last week. It is the same rate that could, pending an announced review, become a new general norm in US foreign trade relations. It is also substantially higher than the less than 2 per cent effective rate that the US charged the EU before Trump returned to office. It was 'the best we could get', von der Leyen said almost apologetically in a news conference after the deal was announced. Indeed, a hard US-imposed deadline to conclude negotiations loomed on August 1, only four days after the agreement was reached. Without the deal, US tariffs on EU imports, which form about 20 per cent of the US's total foreign purchases, would have shot up to 30 per cent across the board, with high levies on automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and other key industries in which the EU has a competitive advantage left painfully in place. In other words, Trump appears to be winning his trade war. US markets were flat on Monday, largely in anticipation of corporate earnings reports, and have risen strongly in the year to date. Wiser commentators have also come to the realisation that Trump's tariff strategy is not the economic disaster that so many of them had predicted – noting robust aggregate data and little sign that households are under pressure. The IMF's latest forecasts indicate that the US will continue to significantly outperform its developed world rivals. The president has secured commitments for considerable new investment in the US from a range of trading partners, alongside a more level playing field for American exporters. America's discredited legacy media, however, refuses to accept that there might be any advantages to the president's approach. 'Few are cheering,' said CNN of Trump's EU deal. It also felt compelled to argue that the agreement will not allow the president to escape questions about the simmering scandal around the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. For good measure, the Left-wing news network featured a human interest story claiming Trump's tariffs could 'ruin' a women's golf apparel brand. 'Questions, critiques and discrepancies are hanging over the framework agreement,' declared a sceptical New York Times analysis, apparently written by seven reporters, who accused the deal of having 'drawn plenty of grumbling' from critics just hours after its announcement. On Monday, a follow-up New York Times article warned that the tariffs could inflict higher prices for Botox, Ozempic, and other cosmetic drugs. One could argue that the former paper of record, as it is often called, knows its remaining audience, but that same day it also unironically published an article observing that doctoral graduates in economics, an academic field overwhelmingly critical of Trump's tariffs, now face poor employment prospects. In fairness, on Tuesday, it did acknowledge that the slew of deals 'has seemingly proved Mr Trump right that his tariff threats are a powerful bargaining tool ', but it couldn't resist casting doubt on whether they would prove an economic success. 'Much of this would have happened anyway', sniffed the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal of the EU's commitment to invest hundreds of billions more in the US. Pointing out that EU investment increased by about $200bn from 2023 to 2024, it joylessly observed that 'those investment inflows will increase the US trade deficit because of balance-of-payments accounting'. Perhaps some of these criticisms will be proven correct. But it is not hard to detect an unwillingness among the president's detractors to accept any upside to his approach, or to acknowledge when their own gloomy predictions have been proven disastrously wrong. Not all observers are so down in the mouth. ' The stock market is at record highs … I don't see a country in a depression … And I would have thought … that these tariffs were going to f‑--ing sink this economy by this time, and they didn't,' admitted the liberal American comedian and political commentator Bill Maher, a sometime Trump critic who has a record of giving the president credit when it is due. If the rest of the news media wants to recover ground among the 69 per cent of Americans who say they place little or no faith in it, its practitioners should recognise a good thing when they see it.
