Price at the Pump: Tariff Talk Continues To Push Oil Prices Lower

No surprise here, the back-and-forth tariffs and retaliatory tariffs are giving oil investors a case of vertigo.  Oil prices in Monday’s trade were slightly higher, trading around $61 per barrel, which is up about 1% from last week’s sell off.  Patrick DeHaan with Gasbuddy.com said that slight uptick was thanks to a ray of hope offered by the President.

“Over the weekend, the U.S. giving a temporary break to some items from China, including smartphones, computers, as well as chips," DeHaan noted.  "That gave a little bit of optimism that potentially President Trump is moving back, a little bit, from his stance on tariffs.”

DeHaan said oil investors have been closely following President Trump’s comments on tariffs, which pushed oil prices as low as $57 per barrel last week.  Is there any non-tariff news is impacting oil prices?

“OPEC did revise lower today, it's forecasting for global oil consumption, so that was an interesting development," DeHaan said.  "Keep in mind, OPEC just a few weeks ago announced that it was going to restore production in May faster than expected. So, for OPEC now to revise down their forecasts this year draws into question on how long OPEC is going to maintain restoring the oil production that it had announced it would be restoring just about a month ago.”

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