US-China Tariff Update, Hot Take on Demand:
Yesterday’s (12 May) announcement from the US and China will approximately result in the tariff picture for the next 90 days depicted in the below figure:
It is too early to say to what extent this development will boost oil demand. However, the announcement represents almost a return to status quo before the US/China tariff war started.
Consequently, we now see the outlook for our global oil demand growth moving towards our upside scenario presented last month.
Demand in 3Q 2025 will be particularly affected by this, growing by 400 kb/d higher than our base case, considering the re-start of trade and as we may now see another wave of strong front-loading of trade before the end of the 90-day period.
