By Matthew Martin and Mahmoud Habboush
“China called last night our trade people and said let’s get back to the table,” Trump said at the Group of 7 meeting in Biarritz, France. “We’re going to start very shortly and negotiate and see what happens but I think we’re going to make a deal.”
West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery rose 75 cents, or 1.4%, to $54.92 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 8:40 a.m. in New York. WTI reversed declines of as much as $1.21 earlier.
Brent for October rose 55 cents to $59.89 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe Exchange. Brent traded at a premium of $4.96 to WTI.
“The hot and cold approach to negotiations continues and is creating a great deal of confusion,” said Ole Sloth Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank A/S in Copenhagen. “At this stage we have to assume that tariffs will be raised, which is not good for growth and demand.”
Asked by reporters in Beijing about Trump’s remarks shortly after the American president spoke, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that he wasn’t aware of any weekend calls between the two countries. He repeated China’s position that the trade war should be settled through negotiation.
Futures in New York had dropped on Friday after Beijing said it would impose retaliatory tariffs on another $75 billion of U.S. goods, including oil for the first time. President Trump later responded with additional tariff increases on Chinese goods, and also called for American companies to pull out of Asia’s largest economy.
A tanker offloaded its cargo of U.S. oil in China before the imposition of tariffs on American crude, and five more carrying around 10 million barrels of U.S. oil are on the their way. The deadline for the imposition of levies, set to take effect Sept. 1, hangs over them. Beijing’s tariffs on American oil will make crude from the Permian Basin $3 a barrel more expensive to Chinese buyers.
“Trump increasingly sounds like he needs the deal more than China and he is playing a very high stakes poker game right now,” Hansen said.
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