Brent crude passed 91 dollars a barrel as the negotiation window for the war on Iran closed without an agreement. A 50 per cent US tariff on Canadian goods is scheduled to take effect just after midnight on Wednesday.
Brent crude passed 91 dollars a barrel on Tuesday morning for the first time since July, trading at 91.63 dollars, after the two-month negotiation window to end the US-Israel war on Iran closed on Monday without an agreement. Shipping company Kpler recorded six commodity vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, up from five across the entire weekend, and the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency reported an attack on a cargo ship early Tuesday.[1]
While global crude prices climbed on the Middle East tension, Britain's competition regulator found that road fuel markets had already absorbed higher margins. The Competition and Markets Authority reported that domestic pump prices remained significantly above their levels before the Iran war, and noted that retail margins stayed at or above 2025's historically high rates after some retailers were slow to pass on earlier wholesale diesel price drops between May and June.[2]
A separate trade deadline also arrives on Wednesday, when a 50 per cent US tariff on approximately 20 billion dollars of Canadian products is scheduled to take effect just after midnight. The measure uses Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a provision never previously deployed, to target goods that make up roughly 5 per cent of Canada's exports to the United States. Prime Minister Mark Carney described the last-minute negotiations to find a truce as intense and delicate.[3]
