All News (Page 412)

Markets rebounded Monday after President Donald Trump retreated from his threat to destroy Iranian energy infrastructure and revealed talks with the regime, but the world is unlikely to revert to its prewar status quo, according to a geopolitics expert.

In a Washington Post op-ed on Thursday, Eurasia Group Chairman and former State Department official Cliff Kupchan predicted the Iranian regime, dominated by successive layers of hardliners, will remain hostile to the U.S.

“The end of the war, therefore, is unlikely to usher in a stable peace,” he warned. “That reality means the Strait of Hormuz will become a source of geopolitical risk for a long time—a live wire down the middle of the global economy.”

Even if Tehran eventually negotiates away its uranium enrichment program and longer-range ballistic missiles, it will still have drones, mines and fast attack boats that can threaten tankers, Kupchan pointed out.

And Iran wouldn’t have to use its diminished capabilities very often to scare investors. In fact, despite the U.S. and Israel decimating its military with thousands of airstrikes, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been able to keep the Strait of Hormuz largely closed with occasional attacks on ships.

That threat has effectively bottled up about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas, and prices have soared, though they pulled back somewhat on Monday. Still, the genie is already out of the bottle.

“From now on traders will act based on the knowledge that Iran might at any time attack, and that new perception will create new risk premia in critically important sectors,” Kupchan said.

Indeed, Brent crude oil prices are still above $100 a barrel after tumbling 10% Monday. He expects them to trade in the $80 range for several months due to the lingering risk as well as the time needed to restore output. Oil giants like Saudi Arabia and Iraq slashed production as their exports have been throttled by the Hormuz closure.

Likewise for the LNG market, which suffered a major shock last week when Iran struck a top natural gas field in Qatar that will take years to repair. Meanwhile, the Gulf is also a major source of fertilizer, aluminum, and helium, meaning shortages will curb crop yields, industrial output, and semiconductor supplies, respectively.

The new risk environment will cause prices to stay higher globally and further stoke inflation, Kupchan added. At the same time, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will struggle to rehabilitate their images as safe places to invest, affecting the AI and defense sectors too.

“Capital is a coward, going only where it feels safe,” he noted. “Once unimaginable images of office and hotel towers burning after Iranian strikes will pierce investor sentiment.”

To be sure, the U.S. will likely help allies rebuild after the war and increase regional integration, but the Gulf will need a long time to become a global safe haven for capital again, Kupchan wrote.

There are indications, however, that the Iran war will persist or eventually reignite if there’s a ceasefire. Thousands of Marines are still headed for the Middle East for a potential ground assault on Iran’s main oil-export hub, Kharg Island, or perhaps coastal areas to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The UAE also hinted at an increasingly hardened position toward Iran that aligns more closely with the U.S. and Israeli stance.

“Our thinking does not stop at a ceasefire, but rather turns toward solutions that ensure lasting security in the Arabian Gulf, curbing the nuclear threat, missiles, drones, and the bullying of the straits,” Anwar Gargash, a senior UAE diplomat, wrote on X over the weekend. “It is inconceivable that this aggression should turn into a permanent state of threat.”

Even NATO, which nearly collapsed earlier this year as Trump threatened to seize Greenland, will eventually come around to support the Iran war, despite several members rejecting U.S. demands to provide naval escorts, Secretary General Mark Rutte said Sunday.

That’s after Iran launched ballistic missiles at a U.S.-U.K. base 2,500 miles away on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The attack was unsuccessful, but it demonstrated that Iran’s missiles have much longer range than previously known and could theoretically reach most of Europe.

“If Iran would have the nuclear capability, including, together with the missile capability, it will be a direct threat, a existential threat, to Israel, to the region, to Europe, to the stability in the world,” Rutte told CBS News. “So the president doing this is crucial, and I’ve seen the polling, but I really hope the American people will be with him, because he is doing this to make the whole world safer.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A landmark free trade deal between the European Union and four South American countries will begin on May 1 after more than a quarter-century of negotiations and new global economic uncertainty unleashed by tariffs, critical mineral controls and the war in Iran.

The European Commission said Monday that the start date for the EU-Mercosur free trade deal was triggered by Brussels receiving a “note verbale” from Paraguay that it had approved the deal, which is a key part of the 27-nation EU’s strategy to slash economic dependencies on China and the United States.

Parliaments in Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina have ratified the deal that links more than 700 million people and accounts for 25% of global gross domestic product. Bolivia, the newest Mercosur member, didn’t participate in negotiations but will be able to join the deal in the coming years.

“The priority now is turning this EU-Mercosur agreement into concrete outcomes, giving EU exporters the platform they need to seize new opportunities for trade, growth and jobs,” said European trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.

Fierce opposition by farmers and environmentalists delayed the deal in December. It then hit another snag after EU lawmakers voted to send the deal to the bloc’s judiciary. The EU executive responded by saying it would provisionally enact the deal — effectively sidestepping the European Parliament.

That means trade will begin in May and halt only if the European Court of Justice rules against it.

French President Emmanuel Macron called that move “a bad surprise.” France and Poland had led a campaign to halt or temper the deal with clauses protecting consumers and agricultural producers.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has shrugged off such criticism of a deal she describes as vital for the EU’s survival in a newly disordered world.

“This is about resilience, this is about growth, and Europe shaping its own future,” she told a news conference in February. Recently, she has not taken questions about the issue.

Von der Leyen is in Australia this week for talks aimed at a potential free trade deal, defense cooperation and critical mineral supplies.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The U.S. economy was supposed to start the year with a bang, fueled by an unusually large jump in tax refunds from President Donald Trump’s tax cut legislation. Yet spiking gas prices are on track to eat up those refunds, leaving most Americans with little extra to spend.

“Next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time,” Trump said in a prime-time speech in December that was intended to address voters’ concerns about the economy and stubbornly high prices.

But that was before the Iran war, which began Feb. 28. Oil and gas prices have soared since then, with the nationwide average price of gas reaching $3.94 Sunday, up more than a dollar from just a month earlier.

Gas prices are likely to remain elevated for some time, even if the war ends soon, because shipping and production have been disrupted and will take time to recover. Economists now expect slower growth this spring and for the year as a whole, as dollars that are spent on gas are less likely to be used for restaurant meals, new clothes, or entertainment.

Lower and middle-income households are likely to be hit particularly hard, because they receive lower refunds, while spending a greater proportion of their earnings on gas.

“The energy shock is to going to hit those who have the least cushion,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy at the left-leaning Groundwork Collaborative and a former economist in the Biden White House. “And it doesn’t look like those tax refunds are going to be here to save them.”

Neale Mahoney, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, calculates that gas prices could peak in May at $4.36 a gallon, based on oil price forecasts by Goldman Sachs, followed by slow declines for the rest of the year. The notion that gas prices decline much more slowly than they rise is so ingrained among economists that they refer to it as the “rocket and feathers” phenomenon.

In that scenario, the average household would pay $740 more in gas this year, nearly equal to the $748 increase in refunds that the Tax Foundation has estimated the average household will receive.

Through March 6, refunds have risen by much less than that, according to IRS data: They have averaged $3,676, up $352 from $3,324 in 2025. Still, average refunds could rise as more complex returns are filed.

Other estimates show similar impacts. Economists at Oxford Economics, a consulting firm, estimate that if gas prices average $3.70 a gallon all year, it will cost consumers about $70 billion — more than the $60 billion in increased tax refunds.

The gas price spike comes with many consumers already in a precarious position, particularly compared to 2022, when gas prices also soared because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At that time, many households still had fattened bank accounts from pandemic-era stimulus payments and companies were hiring rapidly and sharply lifting pay to attract workers.

Now, hiring is nearly at a standstill and Americans’ saving rate has steadily fallen in the past few years as many households borrow more to sustain their spending.

“When you start looking across the perspective from a consumer side, you’re seeing people who have maxed out their credit cards, are using ‘buy now, pay later’ to purchase their groceries,” said Julie Margetta Morgan, president of The Century Foundation, a think tank. “They’re making it work for now, but that can fall apart quite quickly.”

The impact will likely worsen the “K-shaped” narrativ e around the U.S. economy, analysts said, in which higher income households have fared better than lower-income households. The bottom 10% of earners spend nearly 4% of their incomes on gasoline, Pantheon Macroeconomics estimates, while the top 10% spend just 1.5%.

For now, most analysts still expect the U.S. economy to expand this year, even if more slowly, given the gas price shock. Higher gas prices will likely worsen inflation in the short run, but over time weaker spending will also slow growth.

American consumers and businesses have repeatedly shaken off shocks since the pandemic — soaring inflation, rising interest rates, tariffs — and continued to spend, defying concerns that the economy would tip into recession. Many economists note that the proportion of their incomes that Americans spend on gas and other energy has fallen significantly compared with a decade ago.

Data from the Bank of America Institute, released Friday, showed that spending on gas on the bank’s credit and debit cards shot 14.4% higher in the week ended March 14 compared with a year ago. Before the war, such spending was running 5% below the previous year, a benefit to consumers.

Spending on discretionary items — restaurant meals, electronics, and travel — is still growing, the institute said, evidence of consumer resilience. But there is little sign it is accelerating, as many economists had hoped.

“The longer these gasoline prices persist, the more that will gradually sap consumer discretionary spending,” said David Tinsley, senior economist at the institute.

Other analysts expect growth will slow because of the war. Bernard Yaros and Michael Pearce, economists at Oxford Economics, forecast that the U.S. economy will grow just 1.9% this year, down from an earlier estimate of 2.5%.

“We had anticipated a lift in spending from a bumper tax refund season,” they wrote, “but the rise in gasoline prices, if sustained, would more than offset that boost.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The head of the International Energy Agency said Monday that the global economy faces a “major, major threat” because of the Iran war.

“No country will be immune to the effects of this crisis if it continues to go in this direction,” Fatih Birol said at Australia’s National Press Club in Canberra on Monday.

The crisis in the Middle East, he said, has had a worse impact on oil than the two oil shocks of the 1970s combined, and a worse effect on gas than the Russia-Ukraine war.

Israel launched a new wave of attacks early Monday against Tehran. U.S. President Donald Trump also warned the United States will “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if Tehran doesn’t fully open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. That prompted Iran to say it would respond to any such strike with attacks on U.S. and Israeli energy and infrastructure assets.

Trump is facing increasing pressure at home to secure the strait as oil prices soar.

One major fear is that the war could knock out oil and gas production in the Middle East for a long time, which would mean high prices could last a while and cause inflation to rip higher around the world. The U.S. stock market has a history of bouncing back relatively quickly from past conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, as long as oil prices don’t stay too high for too long.

Iran on Monday renewed strikes on its Gulf neighbors and threatened to start hitting their power plants.

“The situation is very severe,” Birol said in Australia.

The oil crises of 1973 and 1979, he said, lost together 10 million barrels per day, causing “major economic problems around the world, the recessions. And today, only as of today, we lost 11 million barrels per day — so more than two major oil shocks put together.”

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said, the gas markets, especially in Europe, “lost about 75 billion cubic meters, 75BCM. And as of now, as a result of this crisis, we lost about 140BCM, almost twice (as much).”

Birol said 40 energy assets in nine countries across the region were “severely or very severely damaged.”

“Some of the vital arteries of the global economy, such as petrochemical, such as fertilizers, such as sulfur, such as helium — their trade is all interrupted, which would have serious consequences for the global economy,” he said.

He said the International Energy Agency, “in order to comfort the markets,” earlier released 400 million barrels of oil, “which is historic. We have never released so much oil to the markets. … The single most important solution to this problem is opening up the Hormuz Strait as things stand now.”

The official added that he was consulting with governments in Europe, Asia, North America and the Middle East about the prospect of releasing further stockpiled oil.

“We will see, we will look at the markets,” he said. “If it is necessary, of course, we will do it, but we will look at the conditions, we will analyze, assess the market and discuss with our member countries.”

___

AP writer Foster Klug contributed to this report from Tokyo.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Arrivals and departures were temporarily paused at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Monday morning after air traffic controllers evacuated the tower due to a burning smell coming from an elevator, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the issue, and the agency said it was determined that no fire had occurred. The delay lasted less than an hour, and no injuries were reported.

During the pause, FAA staff relocated to a backup tower at the airport, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport. They later returned to the primary tower.

Earlier this month, four airports serving Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Richmond, Virginia, halted all flights for over an hour because of a strong chemical smell that was impeding air traffic controllers. Federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the source of the strong odor was traced to a circuit board that overheated and was replaced.

The temporary pause at Newark Liberty was not related to a fatal accident at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night. In that episode, two people were killed and several others were seriously injured when an Air Canada regional jet struck a fire truck on a runway while landing, officials said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Two people were killed and several others badly hurt when an Air Canada regional jet struck a fire truck on a runway while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, officials said.

The pilot and copilot were killed in the late Sunday night collision, which crushed the nose of the aircraft, while around 40 passengers and crew members were taken to area hospitals, some with serious injuries. Most have since been released from treatment, authorities said Monday.

Two Port Authority employees who were traveling in the fire truck also suffered injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening, aid Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.

In the moments before the crash, an air traffic controller could be heard on a radio transmission giving clearance to a vehicle to cross part of the tarmac, then trying to stop it.

The airport was shut down and air traffic was diverted, and on Monday morning operations also were halted at Newark Liberty International Airport in neighboring New Jersey. Air traffic controllers evacuated the tower because of a burning smell from an elevator, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The shutdowns happened during long waits for travelers due to the busy spring break travel season and a shortage of Transportation Security Administration officers because of a lack of routine funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Pilot and copilot were based out of Canada

The pilot and copilot who died were both based out of Canada, Garcia said during a news conference.

The airport will remain closed until at least 2 p.m. Monday to facilitate the investigation, which is being led by the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Two pilots were killed and dozens injured in this tragedy. Our thoughts are with the victims, their families, and everyone affected,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted online.

The fire truck was traveling across the runway to respond to a separate incident aboard a United Airlines flight, whose pilot had reported “an issue with odor,” said Garcia, who deferred additional questions about the sequence of events leading up to the crash to the NTSB.

There were 72 passengers and four crew members aboard the aircraft, a Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada, according to a statement from the airline. The flight originated at Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, the major airport serving Montreal.

Photos and videos from the scene showed severe damage to the front of the aircraft, with cables and debris hanging from a mangled cockpit. Nearby, a damaged emergency vehicle lay on its side.

Stairways used to evacuate passengers from the aircraft were pushed up to the emergency exits on the jet, a Bombardier CRJ. The impact left the jet with its crumpled nose tilted upward.

Air traffic controller tried to stop vehicle after giving clearance

The air traffic controller tried to warn the vehicle.

“Stop, Truck 1. Stop,” the transmission says. The controller can then be heard frantically diverting an incoming aircraft from landing.

Air traffic controllers are not impacted by the partial government shutdown that has caused long delays at airport security checkpoints in recent days. They have been affected by past shutdowns.

As passengers straggled out of the airport into the dark early Monday, some described having arrived at LaGuardia hours before their flight, hoping to beat the lines.

Arturo Davidson said his Miami-bound flight was on the tarmac Sunday night when fellow passengers saw the collision or its aftermath and reactions rippled through the cabin.

The passengers were soon told there had been an accident. About 20 minutes later, they were informed the airport was closing and they must return to the terminal, he said later Monday, gazing at a departure board filled with cancellations.

“I don’t think we’re going at two,” he sighed, referring to the time Monday afternoon that officials gave as the earliest for reopening LaGuardia.

One of the nation’s busiest airports

LaGuardia was 19th busiest in 2024 out of more than 500 U.S. airports, with over 16.7 million passengers boarding there, according to a 2025 FAA database.

The airport, which opened to commercial traffic in 1939, covers 680 acres (275 hectares) and borders Flushing and Bowery bays in Queens. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey describes it as “one of the nation’s leading domestic gateways for business and leisure travel” in its 2024 Airport Traffic Report.

LaGuardia is one of 35 major airports across the country equipped with an advanced surface surveillance system that uses radar and data from locator systems on planes to alert controllers to potential conflicts on runways, according to the FAA.

There are three different models of Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting trucks, according to a video put out last year about the unit by the Port Authority. One carries 1,500 gallons (5,678 liters) of water and firefighting chemicals. Two others carry 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of water. One of those models is also equipped with a turret that can extend 65 feet (20 meters) to penetrate inside an aircraft and discharge firefighting chemicals.

It’s still too early to tell what went wrong, and investigators from the NTSB will now start collecting facts, interviewing people, downloading recordings and reviewing data from flight recorders, aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said.

“It might be easy enough just to say, ‘Oh, the controller made a mistake.’ But there’s got to be deeper questions,” he said.

___

The story has been updated to correct that the Port Authority video on trucks was put out last year, not last month.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

As of 9 a.m. Eastern Time today, oil sold for $101.44 per barrel (using Brent as the benchmark, which we’ll get into momentarily). That’s $10.64 lower than yesterday—but approximately a $29 rise over the past year.

Will oil prices go up?

It’s impossible to predict the future of oil prices. Several factors determine the movement of oil, but it ultimately boils down to supply and demand. Again, when threats of economic downturn, war, etc. are high, the oil trajectory can turn rapidly.

How oil prices translate to gas pump prices

When you pay for gas at the pump, you’re paying for more than just the crude oil itself; you’re also springing for links along the chain, such as the refineries and wholesalers—not to mention taxes and local gas station markups.

Still, the crude oil aspect affects the final price most dramatically, as it typically accounts for more than half the price per gallon. When oil prices spike, so do gas prices. And frustratingly, when oil prices drop, gas prices tend to take their time drifting down to the lower price (sometimes referred to as “rockets and feathers”).

The role of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

In case of emergency, the U.S. has a store of crude oil known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Its primary purpose is energy security in case of disaster (think sanctions, severe storm damage, even war). But it can also go a long way toward softening crippling price hikes during supply shocks.

It’s not a long-term answer—more of an immediate relief to assist the consumer and keep critical parts of the economy running, like key industries, emergency services, public transportation, etc.

How oil and natural gas prices are linked

Oil and natural gas are both major energy fuels. A big change in oil prices can affect natural gas by extension. For example, if oil prices increase, some industries may swap natural gas for some segments of their operations where possible—which increases demand for natural gas.

Historical performance of oil

When examining oil’s performance, there are generally two major benchmarks:

• Brent crude oil is the main global oil benchmark.
• West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is the main benchmark of North America.

Between the two, Brent better represents global oil performance because it prices much of the world’s traded crude. And, it’s often the best way to track historical oil performance. In fact, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration now uses Brent as its primary reference in its Annual Energy Outlook.

Looking at the Brent benchmark across several decades, oil has been anything but steady. It’s seen spikes due to factors such as wars and supply cuts, and it’s also seen crashes from global recessions and an oversupply (called a “glut”). For example:

• The early 1970s brought the first big oil shock when the Middle East cut exports and imposed an embargo on the U.S. and others during the Yom Kippur War.
• Prices dropped in the mid-1980s for reasons such as lower demand and more non-OPEC oil producers entering the industry.
• Prices spiked again in 2008 with increased global demand, but it soon plummeted alongside the global financial crisis.
• During the 2020 COVID lockdown, oil demand collapsed like never before—bringing prices below $20 per barrel.

All to say, oil’s historical performance has been anything but smooth. Again, it’s hugely affected by wars, recessions, OPEC whims, evolving energy initiatives and policies, and much more.

Energy coverage from Fortune

Looking to stay up-to-date regarding the latest energy developments? Check out our recent coverage:

• Natural gas prices in Texas plunge deep into negative territory and producers are burning it off
• ‘Almost exactly offsetting the boost’: Higher gasoline prices this year could wipe out tax refunds
• U.S. allows sale of stranded Iran oil to cap fuel-price rises

Frequently asked questions

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com