Economy
Europe faces Q4 jet fuel deficit despite tapping far-flung suppliers
A fourth-quarter jet fuel deficit looms for Europe, despite its efforts to secure supplies from faraway countries like South Korea, which is preparing to send its highest volume to Europe in four years this September, according to expert analysis and shipping figures.
The continent has been importing more jet fuel from nations including Nigeria, the United States and Canada since the outbreak of the Iran war over half a year ago, which hit Middle East supplies and cut off around half of Europe’s jet imports.
Europe remains highly exposed to the risk of further supply disruption as Middle Eastern tensions rise.
Consultancy Energy Aspects forecasts that Europe will see a fourth-quarter jet fuel deficit of 510,000 barrels per day, against surpluses of 18,000 bpd in the United States and 419,000 bpd in Asia-Pacific. The third-quarter trend is largely the same.
South Korea in September has become the latest large source of jet fuel shipments to Europe, according to flows data. European imports of the fuel from the Asian nation so far in September stand at 129,000 barrels per day, according to commodities intelligence firm Kpler, the highest since October 2022. LSEG data shows similar volumes.
With the continent expected to remain short of jet fuel, Europe’s imports are set to continue, said James Noel-Beswick, head of commodities at market intelligence firm Sparta Commodities.
Jet fuel is one of the so-called middle distillates, which include diesel and gas oil. European diesel hit a record high this week, firmer than Asia’s diesel markets.
The widening spread between the Asian and European benchmarks is making it more profitable to export barrels into Europe, Noel-Beswick added.
Europe’s jet fuel stocks drop
Imports from South Korea also coincide with low inventories, with stocks held independently in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) oil refining and storage hub hitting their lowest in seven years in the week to Sept. 10.
Asia is a swing supplier of jet fuel to Europe and traders typically turn there when they judge the arbitrage – the relative prices between the two regions – profitable. Average monthly exports last year were 1.5 million barrels, Kpler data showed.
South Korea’s jet fuel output for July hit a seven-year high of almost 13.89 million barrels, while exports reached a 3-1/2-year high, government data showed.
An increase in refinery crude processing rates has contributed to this rise in output, and traders expect crude runs for August to be firmer than July. Provisional government data showed July refining runs at 2.7 million barrels per day, up by 16% from June.
Türkiye has extended the liquidation period of scores of investment funds at the center of a liquidity crunch that prompted authorities to intervene, while detaining more people and freezing assets linked to executives.
Authorities stepped in last week to shore up market stability after some investment funds defaulted on redemption requests, triggering a sharp selloff in Türkiye’s benchmark stock index. The measures helped the index recover some of its losses.
As part of the intervention, the Capital Markets Board (SPK) mandated Ziraat Bank and Işbank to oversee the liquidation of 131 investment funds managed by seven portfolio management companies, including Tera Pörtfoy, Pusula Pörtfoy and Hedef Pörtfoy, on the TEFAS electronic fund trading platform.
Late Sunday, the SPK said it was extending the liquidation period given to the banks to six months from three months, “considering the portfolio structures of the funds subject to liquidation and market developments.” It did not elaborate. The assets under management of liquidated funds have been said to exceed TL 890 billion ($18.3 billion).
An investigation into suspected share price manipulation has led to the detention of top executives from several firms and drawn scrutiny to concentrated bets in thinly traded stocks.
Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said Friday the liquidation would not put pressure on Borsa Istanbul Stock Exchange because regulatory changes should prevent any contagion risk. He said authorities would continue to monitor the market closely.
On Saturday, the Justice Ministry said that Pusula Holding Chair Serdar Turhan, Tera Yatırım Holding Chair Emre Tezmen and three fund administrators had been detained as part of the investigation. It said four other suspects had already been arrested and all other suspects identified by the Capital Markets Board had been barred from leaving the country and had their assets frozen.
On Sunday, the ministry said it had identified a transfer of $15 million from Turhan’s account to an account in Switzerland, and another transfer of $25 million from an account belonging to Muhammed Yarız, another executive at Pusula Pörtfoy Yönetim, which is linked with Pusula Holding.
The ministry added that Nihat Kırmızı, the chairman of the Doğa Sigorta firm, was also detained as part of the probe.
15 detained over Katılımevim shares
On Monday, Justice Minister Akin Gürlek said authorities detained 15 people in a probe into transactions involving shares of Katılımevim, a listed Turkish savings financing company that was founded by Pusula Holding’s Turhan, while freezing assets linked to executives at several investment firms.
Prosecutors launched legal proceedings against 25 suspects in the Katılımevim investigation, Gürlek said in a statement. Ten suspects remained at large.
The SPK last week filed criminal complaints against 38 people over alleged manipulation of shares in Katılımevim and two other listed companies, and imposed two-year trading bans on them.
Authorities froze financial and asset transactions involving executives and officials linked to Pusula Finans Holding, Pusula Yatırım Menkul Değerler, Tera Yatırım Menkul Değerler, Tera Portföy Yönetimi, Hedef Holding, Hedef Portföy Yönetimi, Bulls Yatırım Menkul Değerler, Bulls Portföy Yönetimi and Ufuk Yatırım Yönetim ve Gayrimenkul, Gürlek said Monday.
The government has instructed banks, notaries, land registry authorities and financial crimes watchdog MASAK to prevent assets under investigation from being transferred or reduced, Gürlek said.
Authorities also ordered strict monitoring of transactions by board members, authorized signatories, their spouses and close relatives that could reduce their assets, requiring such transactions to be cleared by prosecutors.
The investigation was continuing, Gürlek said.
Tera says working to repay investors
Tera Pörtfoy said Sunday it had repaid some investors and was working to repay others, but that restrictions imposed by authorities were delaying the process.
“Redemption requests submitted during the period when inflows into our funds were being converted into investments surged within a short timeframe, evolving into a collective outflow demand totaling approximately 300 billion Turkish Lira” ($6.15 billion), Tera Pörtfoy said in a statement.
“It should be appreciated that meeting a demand of this magnitude within such a short period would not be easy for any financial institution,” it said, adding that investors had been paid between September 16 and 18 but that further repayments were not possible “due to transaction restrictions and blocks.”
It also said the firm was ready to cooperate with authorities to conclude the process as quickly as possible.
Alphabet’s Google search engine has been slapped with a 403 million euros ($463 million) fine by the European Union after an inquiry into its processing of location data, a watchdog acting on behalf of the bloc said Monday.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DCP) found that Google infringed European Union privacy rules known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) through three of its specific features – “Web & App Activity,” “Location History” and “Location Accuracy” – from 2018 to 2020.
“As a result of Google’s failures, individuals could have been unaware that their location was being used to, for example, influence them with ads or to infer their interests, and could lose control over their personal data,” DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a statement.
“The retention of users’ location data for longer than necessary aggravated this loss of control.”
It was the fourth-largest fine of the more than 4 billion euros in total levied by the DPC since it became the lead EU regulator for most big U.S. tech firms under the strict 2018 GDPR due to the location of companies’ EU operations in Ireland.
Google was also ordered by the DPC to bring its processing into compliance within six months.
In response, the company said the “case centers around historical policies that have since been updated.”
“From 2019 onward, we’ve significantly evolved our practices and launched robust tools that make managing location data simple,” it added in a statement.
The DPC opened the inquiry in 2020 following complaints from several European consumer rights organizations, including the pan-European consumers’ organisation BEUC, regarding Google’s processing of location data.
The infringements included the lawfulness and fairness of Google’s processing of location data in “Web & App Activity,” an account setting that processes information related to users’ activity on Google services, and “Location History,” which keeps track of users’ location through mobile devices.
Google is subject to three other ongoing statutory inquiries, all of which are at an advanced stage, the DPC added.
Flights in and out of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the north of England were disrupted Monday due to an air traffic control failure, the latest embarrassment to afflict the U.K. national air traffic controller.
Although NATS, formerly known as National Air Traffic Services, said the issue at its Prestwick center in Scotland has been fixed, the repercussions would likely continue through the day at the very least, with flights canceled or delayed.
“We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimize any further disruption,” it said in a statement. “We apologize for the disruption.”
NATS said airports south of Manchester, including those in and out of London, are “broadly unaffected.”
Manchester, Belfast International, Edinburgh and George Best Belfast City airports have seen the most disruption, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.
NATS said the disruption is unconnected with the software glitch that led to the cancellation of over 2,000 flights in and out of the United Kingdom two weeks ago. The chaos prompted mounting calls for its chief executive Martin Rolfe to stand down.
In a report on the outage published Friday, NATS said a software defect in the National Airspace System, which allocates codes so air traffic controllers can identify flights on radar, was behind the decision to ax the flights.
A previous outage in August 2023 cost airlines 100 million pounds ($134 million) and caused travel chaos.
Airlines and airports were aghast at the latest problem to afflict air traffic control over the U.K.
Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline, said 25,000 of its passengers were facing delays as a result of Monday’s issue and repeated its calls for Rolfe to resign.
“Martin Rolfe has presided over repeated system failures, repeated passenger disruption and repeated failures to deliver an effective back-up system,” its chief operations officer Neal McMahon said. “Enough is enough. Martin Rolfe should resign today.”
Rival airline easyJet had to cancel some flights, saying the latest disruption “once again calls into question the resilience of NATS’ systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures.”
And British Airways said it is “disappointing” that some customers may experience disruption after “yet another technical fault” involving NATS.
The U.K. government owns 49% of NATS, making it the largest shareholder and giving it a veto over key decisions. Airlines, airports, investors and employees own the remaining shares in the public-private partnership.
“I know this will be deeply frustrating for passengers after the previous issue,” Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said.
A lot has changed in the four months since the leaders of the two global superpowers last met: Xi Jinping has overseen a surge in China’s trade, while Donald Trump has struggled with falling approval ratings at home.
That shift in fortunes has tempered expectations for their summit in Washington this week, analysts say, with Xi in no rush to make concessions and Trump constrained by a costly war with Iran that has hurt both his popularity and Americans’ wallets.
While thorny issues like Taiwan may surface, the main focus of the Sept. 24 meeting is whether the leaders will signal an extension to a trade truce struck last year that averted a major shock to the global economy.
“Xi is not really looking for anything tangible. He wants to extend the gentleman’s agreement with Trump so that China has time to fortify itself,” said Jon Czin, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution who formerly served as China director at the U.S. National Security Council.
‘Living in Xi’s world’
White House officials have sought to downplay the potential for major breakthroughs.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng helmed preparatory talks in New York Sunday aimed at teeing up some potential agreements on AI guardrails and trade in non-sensitive products.
That is a far cry from Trump’s vow when he returned to office in 2025 to use tariffs to address a trade imbalance with China that was “killing” the United States.
But since agreeing the truce with Xi in October of that year, his attention has been divided among myriad other foreign policy battles, from the wars in Iran and Ukraine to disputes with Europe over free speech.
China has faced its own challenges, such as slowing domestic demand and a protracted property crisis, but the export juggernaut that Trump sought to tame has kept roaring in what economists are increasingly referring to as China Shock 2.0.
China has found new markets and boxed out competition from other industrialized countries. It is exporting more of its goods to the rest of the world, with a $1.2 trillion global trade surplus last year, particularly as its low-priced electric vehicles undercut the auto sectors in Germany, Japan and South Korea.
Its surplus is on pace to top $1 trillion for a second straight year.
While U.S. efforts to curb the cheap parcels that online retailers such as Shein and Temu rely on have worked, more than half of the roughly 6,500 product categories China sold to the U.S. so far this year have grown compared to 2025.
A delegation of Chinese business leaders, potentially including some firms facing U.S. regulatory scrutiny as they seek greater market access, is set to accompany Xi to Washington.
The Trump administration “thought they could use massive unilateral pressure to force China to make concessions, and that did not occur,” said Scott Kennedy, an expert on the U.S.-China economic relationship at Washington-based think tank CSIS.
“Now this is Xi Jinping’s world, and we’re all living in it.”
Taiwan and trade wins
If Xi is in the driver’s seat as analysts suggest, that will further unnerve U.S. allies in Asia who expect the Chinese leader to push Trump to soften Washington’s support for Taiwan.
Xi repeatedly asked him about Taiwan when they met in Beijing in May, including about arms sales and Washington’s resolve to defend the island, Trump told reporters.
The U.S. president described a pending $14 billion arms package for Taiwan as a “negotiating chip” with Beijing.
Some officials in Taipei and Tokyo worry he may be tempted to cash in that chip for political wins ahead of November’s midterm elections, which could prove challenging for his Republican Party.
That could include Chinese purchases of Boeing jets or farm goods, or commitments to curb the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals that have fueled the U.S. opioid crisis.
“China-U.S. ties have become more transactional,” said Wu Xinbo, a professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University who advises China’s Foreign Ministry.
While Washington may want to prioritize trade talks, for Beijing, the U.S. approach to Taiwan could be key, he said.
“If you accommodate our concern on the Taiwan issue, then we would be willing to accommodate your concerns on other issues, be it law enforcement or on purchases of U.S. agricultural products,” Wu said.
Putting pressure on Iran
Washington also sees Xi as uniquely able to exert pressure on Iran to bring an end to the war that has dragged Trump’s approval rating to the lowest of his political career.
However, Xi has shown little inclination to do so. Beijing is reportedly selling billions of dollars’ worth of goods to Iran through a sanctions-evasion scheme. China’s Foreign Ministry says it is not aware of such a scheme.
U.S. threats last month of secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Iran – which Bessent called an “Economic D-Day” – appear not to have yet been wielded against Tehran’s largest trading partner.
That is more evidence, analysts say, that Trump is eager to keep relations with Xi steady as he focuses his energies elsewhere – an arrangement that also suits the Chinese leader.
“Both Xi and Trump feel it’s quite helpful to have stability in the relationship so that they can focus on more pressing things,” said Ruby Osman, senior geopolitical researcher at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
“For Trump, that is Iran. For Xi, that is building out China’s domestic resilience for whatever comes after Trump.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were expected to meet on Sunday to try to prepare ground for potential agreements on artificial intelligence, tariffs and critical minerals for a high-stakes Washington summit this week between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The meetings at JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters in Manhattan, which will also include U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, were due to start at about 10:30 a.m. (2.30 p.m. GMT) and are expected to run all day.
Reuters reported that the Chinese vice premier arrived in New York with visuals also showing him entering the banking giant’s headquarters.
Key topics will be the status of a U.S.-China trade truce that is set to expire on Nov. 10, flows of Chinese rare-earth magnets and critical minerals that U.S. officials say are insufficient, and potential guardrails for artificial intelligence after reports of key security breaches involving AI models.
The most likely outcome, analysts say, would be for Washington and Beijing to agree on small steps to show they are continuing to avoid escalating tensions in a delicate trade relationship that has major consequences for the global economy.
“I think there will be some show of deliverables because of the fact that it’s a presidential summit coming, but I don’t feel like we’re on the verge of some sort of breakthrough,” said Anna Ashton, a longtime China trade analyst and founder of Ashton Intelligence.
“I think the status quo is probably both sides’ general best expectation.”
Many of the issues that He, Bessent and Greer will have to work through for Trump and Xi are holdovers from the two leaders’ meeting in Beijing in May, including an effort on both sides to cut tariffs on non-strategic goods and Chinese pledges to increase purchases of U.S. agricultural goods by $17 billion a year and to purchase more than 200 Boeing aircraft.
The Bessent-He-Greer meeting follows a pattern set over the past 16 months, in which the three officials met in European and Asian cities to tee up potential agreements for Trump and Xi.
These efforts included the November 2025 truce reached in Busan, South Korea, which capped U.S. tariffs imposed during Trump’s second term in office at about 20% on Chinese goods after tit-for-tat escalation had brought them to triple-digit levels on both sides.
The U.S. Supreme Court later struck down the Trump tariffs that were invoked under a national emergencies law, including duties related to fentanyl trafficking.
Trump’s administration has been rebuilding them under new authorities, including restoring a 12.5% tariff on Chinese goods over forced labor allegations. It is finalizing a separate tariff investigation aimed at curbing excess industrial capacity that it says is rampant in China.
Under that truce, China promised to restore the flow of critical minerals to the U.S. and global users. However, a senior U.S. official told reporters on Friday that China’s performance on that front “has not been up to par” and would be a topic for discussion ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.
New talks on AI
The Bessent-He discussions on AI are significant because the U.S. and China are the two major forces driving the development of advanced AI tools and the global adoption of the technology.
Rare earths play a crucial role in the manufacturing of advanced semiconductor technology powering AI.
Bessent said on Friday he expects the discussions to cover “both open- and closed-weight models.” Open-weight models are AI systems with publicly accessible core elements, where users can download and fine-tune them for specific tasks.
Chinese open-weight models are becoming more popular with U.S. companies because they can be cheaper than closed-weight AI tools such as those developed by Anthropic, OpenAI and other U.S. companies.
“The United States remains the leader in AI. And we are open to discussions on avoiding shared risks and avoiding bifurcation of our two systems,” Bessent said in a statement regarding the China talks.
Bessent has called for the U.S. and China to agree on AI “guardrails,” aimed at keeping powerful models out of the hands of malign non-state actors.
Tariff reductions, investment
The U.S. and China also agreed in May to launch discussions to reduce tariffs for non-strategic goods under a so-called “Board of Trade” mechanism along with a similar forum to deal with specific investment issues.
While the Trump administration has tightened restrictions on U.S. companies investing in some industries in China, Reuters reported on Friday that it is working on rules that would likely allow U.S. pharmaceutical firms to invest in promising Chinese drugs and strike licensing deals for them.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday that He would also lead a delegation of Chinese companies to the U.S. that would participate in economic and trade consultations ahead of the summit.
The business delegation, which mirrors a group of U.S. CEOs that Trump brought to Beijing in May, was announced as Trump expressed openness to Chinese automakers building factories in the U.S.
U.S. auto industry groups on Friday urged Trump to maintain an effective ban on Chinese vehicle sales in the U.S. on national security grounds.
Few states may be better positioned to tax billionaires than California. The state is politically left-leaning, faces significant health care funding needs and is home to as many as 250 billionaires whose combined wealth exceeds $2 trillion.
But the Nov. 3 ballot initiative Proposition 40, which asks Californians whether to impose a one-time 5% tax on the state’s billionaires, is far from certain to pass, political analysts say, amid a debate that has raised questions about income inequality and the state’s future business prospects.
Whether and how to tax the ultrawealthy are questions that extend well beyond the Hollywood Hills and Silicon Valley.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and democratic socialist, filmed a video in front of billionaire investor Ken Griffin’s penthouse as part of an ultimately successful campaign to tax high-end second homes in the city. Even a majority of Republicans see billionaires as creating unfairness and contributing to economic woes, one 2025 poll showed.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in August found 64% of independent registered voters in the six-day nationwide poll said they support increasing taxes on corporations and billionaires, compared to 15% who oppose the idea.
“Billionaires are no longer very popular,” said University of California, Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez, a researcher of wealth inequality who helped write Proposition 40. They have “enormous wealth, enormous power.”
Saez describes the proposal as very simply “a tax on billionaires to fund health care.”
California has more billionaires than any other state, according to a Forbes estimate last year, and is home to some of the country’s most valuable companies, including tech giants Google, Apple, Meta and Nvidia .
Polls show it ahead – for now
A UC Berkeley IGS Poll in August found 48% of likely voters supported Proposition 40, with 41% opposed, while a September Public Policy Institute of California poll showed it leading 52% to 46%.
California ballot measures typically need robust early support to survive Election Day. Undecided voters are more apt to vote “no” when the time comes, political analysts say, and opponents have yet to crank up their advertising campaign.
“California ballot measures tend to lose support over time, and if it’s polling below 50% in August, that’s not a good sign for its prospects,” said John Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Backers say California’s measure would generate $100 billion for health care, food assistance and education. But skeptics peg the revenue estimate at closer to $40 billion and say it could also drive some billionaires out of state, depriving California of future tax revenue and investment.
Opposition has been bolstered by billionaires such as Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder who has spent more than $100 million to defeat Proposition 40 and support countermeasures on the same ballot that would effectively void it.
“I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don’t want California to end up in the same place,” Brin, 53, whose family left the Soviet Union when he was a child, told the New York Times.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat widely believed to be running for president in 2028, also opposes Proposition 40, instead advocating for a nationwide federal wealth tax.
Colorful initiative history
California ballot initiatives draw unusual attention because the state combines a powerful direct-democracy system with the nation’s largest state economy and population. The process allows citizens to propose laws, though most initiatives are drafted by interest groups or lawyers.
Proposition 13 in 1978, which capped and rolled back property taxes, became a national symbol of a tax revolt that shaped U.S. politics.
But California voters have only approved one in three citizen initiatives historically.
In 2022, another California ballot measure aimed at increasing taxes on top earners, Proposition 30, lost 58% to 42%, even though Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one.
“Sixty percent of Californians now reliably vote Democratic for statewide races, but that doesn’t mean that they’re really liberal on taxing, spending, or even many social issues,” said Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego.
European countries including France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany repealed wealth taxes between 1997 and 2018 amid concerns about capital flight, avoidance and economic competitiveness. The California proposition is retroactive to Jan. 1, limiting billionaires’ ability to escape the tax by moving.
Saez said the tax was unlikely to prompt many billionaires or the tech startups that are making people wealthy to move, because of the quality of California’s universities, research, infrastructure and talent.
“It’s just absurd to think that Silicon Valley is going to come to a standstill because of a billionaire wealth tax,” he said.
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