US president takes aim at profits as oil companies worldwide benefit from US-Iran conflict. Plus, can you tell if someone is secretly filming you with Meta’s glasses?
Good morning. Donald Trump has criticised oil companies for “making too much money” from the global energy market disruption caused by his war on Iran. The US president took aim at the windfall profits revealed last week by ExxonMobil and Chevron, and claimed the companies would “give some of that back to the public”.
The US oil companies made profits totalling more than $26bn for the three months to the end of June. Chevron reported its highest ever quarterly profit of $12.2bn, a fivefold increase on the same period last year. ExxonMobil reported a profit of $14.5bn in the second quarter, double what it made in the same period a year ago.
Is it just US oil companies profiting from Trump’s war? Europe’s largest oil company, Shell, doubled its net profit to almost $10bn in the three months to June. The crisis helped the Saudi oil company Aramco to a 44% rise in net profits, to $32.69bn, in the same period, despite disruption in the strait of Hormuz. BP has reported its highest quarterly profits since the first year of Russia’s war on Ukraine, though its new chief executive, Meg O’Neill, said there was “more to do” because BP was “not making the most” of its potential.
What is happening with Trump’s new trade tariffs? A coalition of 25 US states sued the Trump administration on Monday over new tariffs pegged at 10%-12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners, calling them a pretext for replacing import taxes that were struck down by the supreme court in February. According to the states involved in the action, tariffs on 59 countries and the European Union imposed last month cover 99.4% of US imports.
What else has happened in ICE detention this week? Attorneys for a man detained in a California immigration detention center have released footage showing him holding up a bottle of water from inside the facility that appeared to be contaminated with worm-like creatures. Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a Los Angeles man who has been detained for months at the Adelanto ICE facility north-east of LA, said the water was given to detainees to drink.
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