How Will U.S. Tariffs Reshape the Global Auto Industry?

By Metal Miner - Oct 15, 2025

• The U.S. government has implemented a 15% tariff on European auto imports, including parts, retroactive to August 1.
• 
  
• The move follows a reciprocal trade agreement framework with the EU that lowered European tariffs on U.S. goods.
• 
  
• European automakers, including Volkswagen, saw share prices rise on the news despite ongoing competition from Chinese vehicle imports.

In a move with major implications for the global automotive industry, the U.S. federal government has implemented a 15% import tariff on auto imports from the European Union. According to a federal register notice from September 24, the move affects cars as well as auto parts. That notice went on to indicate that the duties are also retroactive to August 1.

The Move Follows a Protracted Negotiation

The new tariff follows an August 21 announcement by the United States and the EU regarding a “Framework for an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair and Balanced Trade.” Previously, imports from the 27-member trading bloc had faced duties up to 25%. “Most of the new rates take effect for EU goods shipped starting September 1, but the relief for automobiles and parts was contingent on the EU introducing legislation to lower tariffs on American goods,” business daily The Irish Times reported in a September 24 announcement.

“The bloc followed through with that action on August 28, paving the way for the Trump administration to backdate the new auto charge,” the publication added.

EU Automotive Industry Reacts Positively

Reports indicate that German automakers’ share prices gained on the news. Volkswagen’s share price on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange finished September 24 at €93.40 ($109.28), up 3.2% from €90.50 ($105.91) on September 22. Data on the bourse indicates that the latest price is up over 12.6% from the April 8 low of €82.92 ($97.03).

The European automotive industry has also faced pressure from imports of Chinese vehicles, including high-end passenger cars, small utility trucks, and coaches, which in some cases have been over 20% cheaper than domestically produced units.

In its H1 report, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) stated that the United States is the second-largest export market for EU automakers in terms of value, after the United Kingdom. Citing Eurostat data, the association shows that exports to the United States totaled almost €17.3 billion ($20.2 billion) in the first six months of 2025, off 13.6% from slightly over €20 billion ($23.4 billion).

The ACEA added that the United States occupied third place in terms of volume, with an 8.9% decrease to 351,264 units from 305,701 units. High tariffs originally imposed by the Trump administration, as well as resulting uncertainty in supply chains, were behind the declines.

By Metal Miner

Montana Judge Throws Out Climate Lawsuit

By Irina Slav - Oct 16, 2025

A judge in Montana has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a youth organization and targeting the Trump presidency for pivoting away from decarbonization to more hydrocarbon production.

Per an AP report, Judge Dana Christensen said the plaintiffs, led by NGO Our Children’s Trust, had shown “overwhelming” evidence that climate change was affecting their well-being and its effect was going to get worse but said it was not the court’s job to create climate policies.

“This court would be required to monitor an untold number of federal agency actions to determine whether they contravene its injunction. This is, quite simply, an unworkable request for which plaintiffs provide no precedent,” Judge Christensen said, as quoted by Reuters.

Our Children’s Trust specializes in climate change-based lawsuits brought to court by young people, often large groups of them.

“Every day these executive orders remain in effect, these 22 young Americans suffer irreparable harm to their health, safety, and future,” Julia Olson, chief legal counsel at the legal nonprofit, said. “The judge recognized that the government’s fossil fuel directives are injuring these youth, but said his hands were tied.”

Youth-led climate lawsuits allege that climate change—and government policies that do not focus on arresting this change—are robbing the plaintiffs of a future and interfering with their well-being at the moment by violating their right to things such as clean air and water.

Courts have become the go-to venue for critics of President Trump’s policies due to the lack of many other alternatives. For now, the results are mixed, with some courts siding with some of the Trump administration’s challengers and ruling against others.

Our Children’s Trust said they would appeal the Christensen ruling immediately. “We will appeal — because courts cannot offer more protection to fossil fuel companies seeking to preserve their profits than to young Americans seeking to preserve their right, the NGO’s chief legal counsel said.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

SOLIDARITY

Mexico Sends $3 Billion in Subsidized Fuel to Cuba in Just Four Months

By Charles Kennedy - Oct 15, 2025

Between May and August 2025, Mexico shipped more than $3 billion worth of subsidized fuel to Cuba through Gasolinas Bienestar, a subsidiary of state oil company Pemex, according to an investigation by Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI). The figure is three times higher than the total shipments during the final two years of the previous administration.

MCCI found that at least 58 fuel shipments — including gasoline, diesel, and crude — departed from Mexican ports over just four months, mostly from Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, with three leaving from Tampico, Tamaulipas. The cargoes were tracked through maritime monitoring platforms, showing consistent routes between Mexico and Cuba.

One of the vessels, the Sandino, was included in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list in 2019 for transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Despite this, the Sandino departed from Laguna de Pajaritos on August 20 and arrived a week later at Cuba’s Camilo Cienfuegos refinery, the investigation revealed.

The Cuban importer in most cases was Coreydan S.A., a state-owned company based in Havana that shares offices with CUPET, Cuba’s national oil firm.

The scale of Mexico’s fuel aid to Cuba — equivalent to 60 billion pesos — matches the 2026 federal budget for the country’s Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection and far exceeds the budgets for the Attorney General’s Office and education infrastructure funds combined.

MCCI previously warned that the subsidized shipments have worsened Pemex’s financial health. In its first year, Gasolinas Bienestar reported losses and debt of 5.8 billion pesos, reflecting the cost of supplying Cuba with free fuel.

In contrast to what MCCI reports, in the Miami Herald, energy expert Jorge Piñón questioned the accuracy of the reported $3 billion fuel shipments, noting Cuba lacks the storage capacity for such volumes and that customs data is often unreliable. If true, he said, the surge raises key questions amid Cuba’s energy crisis: “Where is that oil? Is Cuba exporting it?”

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

 

GM Faces $1.6 Billion Loss as EV Demand Slows

By ZeroHedge - Oct 15, 2025

• General Motors will incur a $1.6 billion loss to scale back its electric vehicle (EV) operations, citing weaker expected demand due to recent U.S. policy changes, including the end of federal EV tax credits and loosened emissions rules.
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• The decision follows the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit on September 30, which was a key driver of EV sales and was terminated as part of a broader policy rollback under President Trump.
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• Despite the planned cutbacks in EV investments, GM reported strong overall U.S. vehicle sales through the first three quarters of 2025, with certain electric models like the Chevrolet Equinox EV and Cadillac Lyriq performing well.
• 
  

General Motors said on Oct. 14 that it will bear a $1.6 billion loss to scale back its electric vehicle (EV) operations, citing weaker expected demand following recent U.S. policy changes that ended federal EV tax credits and loosened emissions rules.

The Detroit-based automaker said its Audit Committee approved the loss on Oct. 7, covering the three months ended Sept. 30.

The company noted that the loss is part of its plan to realign EV production and factory operations to better match customer demand.

The decision was made after the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit on Sept. 30, part of a broader policy rollback under President Trump.

The credit, officially started under the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, revised under The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and expanded under former President Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, had been a key driver of EV sales in the United States. Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, which set Sept. 30 as the final date for receiving EV purchase credits, effectively terminating the benefit.

“Following recent U.S. government policy changes, including the termination of certain consumer tax incentives for EV purchases and the reduction in the stringency of emissions regulations, we expect the adoption rate of EVs to slow,” GM said in a filing.

GM shares fell 2.5% in premarket trading, but have rebounded since as the broad market recovered...

As Evgenia Filimianova details below for The Epoch Times, according to the filing, $1.2 billion of the loss is related to non-cash impairments, mostly write-downs of EV assets.

The remaining $400 million will be paid in cash for contract cancellations and commercial settlements tied to EV investments.

The company said its review of EV manufacturing and battery component investments is ongoing.

“It is reasonably possible that we will recognize additional future material cash and non-cash charges that may adversely affect our results of operations and cash flows in the period in which they are recognized,” GM added.

GM noted that the costs, along with several smaller ones this quarter, will be recorded as adjustments in its non-GAAP results, which exclude one-time items from the company’s official earnings reported under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).

The automaker also said its EV realignment will not affect current Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac electric models, which “remain available to consumers.”

The all-electric F-150 Lightning from Ford is displayed at the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles on November 18, 2021. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Industry Changes

GM had previously pledged to invest up to $35 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles through 2025, aiming to transition most of its portfolio to zero-emission models later in the decade.

However, slower-than-expected consumer adoption, high production costs, and uncertain government policy have made that goal more difficult to achieve.

GM joins other automakers reassessing the EV market, including rival Ford Motor Co. Last year, Ford said it would take a $1.9 billion hit from plans that included canceling an all-electric SUV and delaying an electric pickup truck.

Despite the planned cutbacks, GM said this month that its overall sales remain strong. The automaker reported total U.S. vehicle sales of 2.2 million through the first three quarters of 2025, its fastest pace in a decade.

GM said the Chevrolet Equinox EV was the best-selling electric model outside Tesla, while its Cadillac Lyriq, Optiq, and Vistiq models all ranked among the top 10 in U.S. EV sales.

Analysts have said that the end of the federal EV tax credit “will test whether the electric vehicle market is mature enough to thrive on its own fundamentals or still needs support to expand further.”

In a Sept. 2 report, Duncan Aldred, GM’s North America president, said the company expects lower EV sales next quarter after the tax credits end on Sept. 30. He added that it may take a few months for the market to steady.

“Still, we believe GM can continue to grow EV market share,” he wrote. “We are seeing marginal competitors dramatically scale back their products and plans, which should end much of the overproduction and irrational discounts we’ve seen in the marketplace.”

By Zerohedge

 

The LNG Boom That’s Pricing Out American Consumers

By Irina Slav - Oct 15, 2025

• Exports of U.S. liquefied natural gas have been breaking records since the start of this year.
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• Higher prices for U.S. natural gas seem to be inevitable as the main shale gas basins experience the same trends as oil basins.
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• Industry executives: gas drillers need prices of $5 per mmBtu to invest in drilling in less lucrative, costlier parts of the shale patch.
• 
  

U.S. natural gas prices this week hit a two-week low on forecasts of a milder weather ahead. At $3.03 per mmBtu, natural gas was the lowest since late September—but it was significantly higher than in October 2024. Surging LNG exports may have something to do with this. The situation poses something of a dilemma for President Trump.

When he came into office, Trump vowed to make energy cheap and make America energy dominant globally. In oil, this means low prices at the pump and ever-growing exports. In natural gas, the goal is identical—and equally tricky to achieve due to the mutual exclusivity of the two elements of that goal.

Exports of U.S. liquefied natural gas have been breaking records since the start of this year. The latest data, for September, shows a total of 9.4 million tons, up from the previous record-breaking monthly total, exported in August, at 9.3 million tons. Chances are that as Europeans rush to stock up on gas ahead of winter, another record will be broken this month. The question now is whether gas drillers will keep up with the export growth—and whether they would want to.

Like crude oil drillers, natural gas producers in the United States are quite sensitive to price changes. When gas prices trend lower for long enough, drillers start cutting production. But now, there does not seem to be a reason to do that – gas prices are up by about $1 per mmBtu over the past year, and the demand outlook is absolutely bullish, with data centers driving construction of new natural gas power plants at home and Europe’s commitment to buy a lot more U.S. energy driving export growth. One point to Trump’s energy dominance agenda—but at the expense of his cheap energy at home goal.

The United States became a gas superpower thanks to the shale industry. However, shale basins are maturing, the Wall Street Journal noted in a recent report on the status of President Trump’s energy agenda. Just like with oil, it would become costlier to get more natural gas out of the ground in the coming years—and this would make gas more expensive for both consumers at home and buyers overseas.

“If you want to export all this LNG, if you want data sector growth, all the power demand growth, you’re going to need higher prices,” Eugene Kim, analyst at Wood Mackenzie, told the Wall Street Journal. “And that goes in contradiction to what Trump wants, which is lower energy.”

Norway found this out a couple of years ago when it boosted gas and electricity exports to struggling Europe, only to discover this meant higher electricity prices for Norwegians, which Norwegians did not particularly like. The government promptly set curbs on energy exports to keep costs affordable at home.

“Upgraded forecasts show that the world will need more gas for power generation, heating and cooling, industry and transport to meet development and decarbonisation goals,” the head of Shell’s LNG trading division, Tom Summers, said earlier this year, with the release of the company’s LNG demand outlook, which saw said demand soaring by 60% by 2040. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, meanwhile, says that LNG exports in July this year came in at 14 billion cu ft. This could rise to 27 billion cu ft, according to analysts cited by the Wall Street Journal. It looks like a best-case, dream-grade scenario for U.S. LNG producers during an administration that is eager to help them boost export capacity. For consumers, not so much.

Higher prices for U.S. natural gas seem to be inevitable as the main shale gas basins experience the same trends as oil basins—some of which, by the way, produce a solid portion of the country’s gas total as associated gas released from oil wells. These trends include depletion of the so-called sweet spots, or in other words, the lowest-cost, highest-yield parts of the reservoirs. This means higher production costs going forward, and higher production costs mean higher end prices.

According to industry executives mentioned by the WSJ in its report, gas drillers need prices of $5 per mmBtu to invest in drilling in less lucrative, costlier parts of the shale patch. That would be double the price increase for U.S. gas over the past 12 months. Yet it’s either that or tighter supply due to less drilling, which would also push final gas prices higher. This, however, is not something producers want—because it destroys demand.

“We want to see a stable, long-term price for the commodity,” the chief executive of Aeton Energy Management said earlier this year. “What we don’t want to see is demand destruction because of price volatility.” Long-term stability in energy commodity prices is an elusive dream, but on the flip side, both oil and gas demand are rather inelastic. This would suggest everyone should brace for more expensive gas.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

NORTH American Clean Energy Under Pressure from Foreign Patent Fronts

By Alex Kimani - Oct 15, 2025

• U.S. clean energy growth has slowed sharply, with solar, wind, and battery additions expected to rise only 7% in 2025.
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• China has overtaken the U.S. in clean energy innovation, unveiling the world’s first operational thorium reactor and dominating global supply chains for solar, wind, and batteries.
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• U.S. firms remain active in clean tech patenting, though legal battles like Tigo Energy’s settlement with SMA and Maxeon Solar’s lawsuit against Canadian Solar highlight growing competition and IP tensions in the sector.

The U.S. clean energy drive has slowed down markedly in the current year,  with solar, wind and battery capacity additions on track to climb a modest 7% in 2025 from 2024 levels, the slowest clip in over a decade. The wind sector is particularly badly hit, with projections of a mere 1.8% in capacity growth in the current year, the lowest since 2010, largely due to policy headwinds by the Trump administration including the cancellation of hundreds of millions in offshore wind funding as well as freezing permitting for offshore wind projects. However, the transitory nature of the U.S. government is likely to keep clean energy innovation in the country alive and well.

Whereas the exact total number of clean energy patents issued in the U.S. is not readily available in a single, up-to-date figure, global trends show a large and growing number over the past decade. Between 2017 and 2021, there were 78,000 patent families in low-carbon energy technologies, with the United States contributing significantly to this global total. Some specific areas, like photovoltaic energy, have shown high patent activity in the U.S. between 2015 and 2025, with over 3,200 filings. However, the U.S. Patent Office now has its work cut out, given the stiff competition in the global clean energy sector and the fact that many countries, particularly China, are out-innovating the U.S. in cleantech.

China is the global leader in clean energy innovation, including in the manufacturing, large-scale deployment, investment, and the development of new technologies like fast-charging electric vehicles. The country's dominance in the supply chain for key clean energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries is significant, supported by decades of strategic planning and massive government and private investments. In April, Chinese scientists unveiled the world’s first operational thorium reactor.  According to Guangming Daily, the 2-megawatt experimental reactor is located in the Gobi Desert, and the latest milestone puts China at the forefront in the race to build a practical thorium reactor–long considered a more abundant and safer alternative to uranium. More significantly, China relied heavily on long-abandoned American research in the field.  In the 1960s, American scientists built and tested molten salt reactors, but Washington eventually shelved the program in favor of uranium-based technology. “The US left its research publicly available, waiting for the right successor. We were that successor,” project chief scientist Xu Hongjie said. “Rabbits sometimes make mistakes or grow lazy. That’s when the tortoise seizes its chance,” he added.

U.S. based companies and startups are still pursuing patents near historically high levels, including in the battery and electric vehicle sectors. These companies use these patents as tools or corporate assets to achieve various business objectives such as creation of barriers to entry,  protection of competitive differentiators and protection of market share, among other important uses. The fact that the vast majority of cleantech innovations are now happening outside the United States makes it harder to find non-U.S. prior art especially for overbroad patent portfolios. Prior art documents are any publicly available information that existed before the filing date of a patent application, such as patents, publications, websites, and products, that can be used to determine if an invention is novel and non-obvious. Patent examiners use prior art to decide if an invention meets the criteria for being new and not an obvious modification of what already exists. Patents experts are increasingly advising their clients to prepare at least a part of their patent portfolio in a more narrow manner to lower the risk of future litigations airing from unconsidered prior art arising that can result in significant legal costs.

Recent patent cases involving U.S. energy companies include Tigo Energy's (NASDAQ:TYGO) settlement with SMA over solar technology and Maxeon Solar's (NASDAQ:MAXN) lawsuits against competitors like Canadian Solar (NASDAQ:CSIQ) and REC Solar for allegedly infringing on its TOPCon solar panel technology. Tigo Energy reached a multi-year settlement with SMA in May 2025 to end a patent infringement lawsuit concerning Tigo's rapid shutdown technology for solar systems. Tigo filed the lawsuit in July 2022, alleging that SMA infringed on several of its patents related to rapid shutdown features required by the U.S. National Electrical Code (NEC). The settlement concluded the legal dispute, though the specific terms remain confidential. Meanwhile, Maxeon Solar sued Canadian Solar in March 2024 for infringing on its patents for TOPCon solar cell technology, alleging that Canadian Solar's n-type solar panels with TOPCon cells violate its intellectual property. This lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and is part of a broader effort by Maxeon to protect its patents against companies that make, import, or sell TOPCon products. Canadian Solar has indicated it will defend itself against the claims.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

 

Oil Chiefs See $60 Oil as Breaking Point for Shale Growth

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Oct 15, 2025

• Oil executives remain bullish long term, agreeing that while a short-term glut looms due to surging supply and weak demand, tightening fundamentals and slowing non-OPEC growth will eventually rebalance the market.
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• TotalEnergies and ConocoPhillips warn that U.S. shale output will plateau or decline if WTI stays near $60 a barrel.
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• ExxonMobil and Aramco stress sustained demand from emerging economies and call for continued investment in conventional oil.
• 
  

Top executives from supermajors, the U.S. shale patch, and national oil companies remain bullish about the oil market in the medium and long term, expecting growing demand and the downturn in oil prices to eventually rebalance supply and demand from the looming glut.

At the Energy Intelligence Forum in London this week, the oil bosses acknowledged the bearish short-term fundamentals as supply growth outpaces the increase in demand. But they also see the market rebalancing in the medium term and supply struggling to catch up with demand in the long term.

Everyone concurs that there will be a glut in the short term; projections vary only about how big the oversupply will become later this year and early next year.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) this week warned, again, that soaring supply and “subdued” demand would bloat the oversupply to record levels.

Surging Middle East supply, combined with robust flows from the Americas, boosted oil on water in September by a massive 102 million barrels, equivalent to 3.4 million barrels per day (bpd), which is the largest increase since the pandemic, the agency said in its monthly report.

Related: North Sea Oil: Booming in Norway and Doomed in the UK

“Looking ahead, as the significant volumes of crude oil on water move onshore to major oil hubs, crude stocks look set to surge while NGLs start to drop,” the IEA noted.

Oil executives may be concerned about falling oil prices and declining profits in the short term, but they have seen their fair share of periods of oversupply and remain upbeat about the medium and long term.

“Fundamentally, the short term market is a little bearish,” Patrick Pouyanne, the chief executive of TotalEnergies, said at the forum.

“But we are quite bullish on the medium-term,” the executive added, pointing out to production decline rates and continued growth in global oil demand.

Non-OPEC crude production will begin to decline when oil prices are at $60 per barrel and lower, Pouyanne noted.

“There is a point at $60 per barrel where we'll see the shale industry beginning to slow down,” Pouyanne said on the sidelines of the forum, as carried by Reuters.

“Our view is that from mid-2026 non-OPEC supply will be much lower, no growth, and then OPEC will be regaining control of the market,” TotalEnergies’ top executive said.

Ryan Lance, chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips, said that “At $60-$65 a barrel WTI oil prices, the US is probably plateau-ish.”

U.S. oil output could grow by between 300,000 bpd and 400,000 bpd this year, Lance said.

“But if prices stay at $60 or go into the $50s, you probably are plateauing or slightly declining,” the executive added.  

ExxonMobil’s CEO Darren Woods believes the glut will be just a short-term issue in markets, and the bigger issue will be how supply will meet demand in the medium and long term.

“Oil market oversupply is likely to be a short-term issue, with demand from emerging economies set to make meeting global energy demand more challenging in the medium to longer term,” Woods said at the forum in London.

“We continue to do the same thing under the Biden administration and under the Trump administration,” Exxon’s top executive said.

Exxon “look beyond political cycles and think fundamentally about the long-term fundamentals of economic growth around the world.”

Amin Nasser, the chief executive of the Saudi state oil giant Aramco, said in a speech at the forum that the energy transition faces a reality check and reality on the ground points not to an energy transition, but to “an energy addition which requires all hands on deck.”

“We also see resilient demand, and the pressing need for long-term investments in supply is now widely accepted. So, our growth potential in oil remains large,” Nasser said.  

Despite the bearish short-term fundamentals, the long-term prospects and the need for more supply years from now remain intact, according to the executives.

“The key strategic question for companies like mine and others is, where is the conventional oil going to come from to satisfy the demand in the face of plateauing or peaking U.S. unconventional supply, as demand continues to grow,” ConocoPhillips’ Lance said.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

 

Ship Movements Resume at Belgian Ports After Pilots Suspend Job Action

Ship movements resumed after a day-long national strike and Belgian maritime pilots suspended their job action (Port of Antwerp)

Published Oct 15, 2025 4:39 PM by The Maritime Executive

Shipping has begun to move again at Belgium’s ports after a 10-day job action by the unions representing the pilots in protest of government pension reforms. The return to a normal work schedule came a day after a national strike brought large parts of Belgium, including the seaports, to a stop.

The unions representing the pilots said they were giving the government 10 days, until October 24, to demonstrate concrete progress through mediation. The job action came after the union accused the government of not proceeding with a framework that had been agreed in June, which called for resolving the pension reforms by the end of November and better alignment of the pensions for pilots with other government workers. The unions said they were giving “negotiations another chance.”

Pilots had been adhering to work rules and limiting their available hours since October 5. The effect was to create a massive backlog of ships stuck at the dock without an assigned pilot or waiting in the offshore anchorage. 

Further adding to the delays was a national strike called by the public unions on October 14. By midday, the police reported there were 80,000 protestors in Brussels calling for the government to relax its plans for pension reforms and spending cuts. The strike impacted operations at the country’s airports and saw the Port of Antwerp and others closed to inbound and outbound vessels due to understaffing in the maritime control center. The Port of Antwerp said there was activity inside the port, but no vessels could transit due to the national strike. In the capital of Brussels, reports said buses, trams, and the subway were all suspended.

The Port of Antwerp reported, as of late on Wednesday, October 15, more than 180 vessels remained backlogged (60 outbound and 128 inbound vessels), but operations were moving again. They, however, said the logistics chain is at only about 70 percent of capacity as the pilots are continuing to enforce 12-hour rest periods. They expect it will take days to clear the backlog of ships at both Antwerp and Zeebrugge.

The other major port, Rotterdam, also reported that container vessels were again moving after a week-long strike by lashers for better pay. A court ordered the lashers responsible for securing and releasing containers on docked vessels back to work as of Monday morning. Negotiations were due to resume, while the court said that if there was no progress, the strike could resume on Friday.

Congestion had been building at two of Europe’s busiest North Sea ports, with the potential for impacts along the routes of many carriers. Some vessels were already skipping the port while Maersk, for example, told customers it was contingency planning and monitoring the situation. The hope is that the backlogs can ease while the negotiations resume.