Friday May, 10, 2019
1. Grain prices crash on Trump’s trade war
- Soybean and corn futures plunged after President Trump announced tariff hikes on China via twitter. The Bloomberg Grains Subindex Total Return fell to its lowest level since 1977.
- As Bloomberg noted, July soybean futures fell to a record low, falling to $8.1675 per bushel at the start of the week.
- Meanwhile, U.S. farmers are still drying out from record floods, which damaged crop land and infrastructure, and delayed plantings.
- The prospect of a major hike in tariffs on China, and the anticipated retaliatory trade actions on the U.S., could depress agricultural commodities further.
2. Libya could lose 1 mb/d
- Over the past year, Libya has been a bearish factor for oil prices, restoring long-disrupted output and reaching multi-year production highs at over 1.2 mb/d as recently as March.
- But the reignited civil war could put an end to all of those gains.
- The restoration of production hinged on a delicate but important division of the oil sector: The government in Tripoli controlled the legal authority to export oil, while the LNA provided the security.
- Now, at war, it’s much more likely a winner-take-all mentality will emerge, leading to disruptions. “[W]e think it unlikely that the arrangement can survive a protracted stalemate and the associated weakening of the LNA. In our view there is a high risk that Libyan…
