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President Trump recently threatened to tax, nearly $300 billion dollars of Chinese products, by 10%. The already volatile oil market, seems to have room for some extra volatility. The volatility would largely cycle around China’s response to the U.S. tariffs. If China responds by purchasing oil from Iran, analysts speculate crude could rapidly approach $30 per barrel. Trump could impose the sanctions on the Chinese imports as soon as September 1^st. Trump also threatened that he could raise the tariff, if no progress has been made towards a trade deal.

According to reports, Iran is quickly going to breach the Uranium-stockpile limit set by the current nuclear deal.  President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has already warned that a new deal needed to be in action by Sunday June 7, 2019 or the Islamic Republic will increase enrichment of Uranium.  Globally, there is much concern with the growth rate of Iran’s uranium cache, because they are just a step away from weapon-grade levels of uranium.

Early this morning the U.S. navy responded to an attack on two burning tankers after reports came that there was an attack in the Gulf of Oman. Off the coast in Iran, the USS Bainbridge was dispatched after the vessels suffered severe damage.

On May 2nd, the United States’ waiver period that granted eight nations to continue importing Iranian oil without penalty has ended.  The countries who granted extensions that ended are China, India, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.  As of today, only Italy, Taiwan and Greece have halted their purchases of Iranian produced oil.  The United States now faces the dilemma of either granting further extensions to the waiver thus backing down from their threats, or risk creating further global tension by sanctioning the countries that continue to do business with Iran.

Global oil prices shot up quickly this week following reports that the Trump administration has decided to let Iranian oil sanctions exemptions expire at the end of the month.  By ending sanctions exemptions, the administration has accelerated its goal of forcing Iran’s oil exports to zero.  At a Monday press conference, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo clearly laid out the purpose of ending the waivers by stating “We are going to zero.  How long we remain there, at zero, depends solely on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s senior leaders.  We’ve made our demands very clear to the ayatollah and his cronies.”