Home / Metal News / Heavy! The WTO expert group found that the United States responded to our 301 tariff measure "illegal" by the Ministry of Commerce in the middle of the night. During the hurricane season, API stocks fell unexpectedly, and international oil prices rebounded

Heavy! The WTO expert group found that the United States responded to our 301 tariff measure "illegal" by the Ministry of Commerce in the middle of the night. During the hurricane season, API stocks fell unexpectedly, and international oil prices rebounded

iconSep 16, 2020 08:12
Source:Futures daily

SMM: the WTO has ruled that it is illegal for the Trump administration to impose tariffs on Chinese goods worth more than $200 billion, according to the Associated Press. Yesterday night, the Ministry of Commerce responded to this, saying that China appreciates the objective and impartial ruling made by the WTO panel.

On the same day, the tariff Commission of the State Council announced the extension list of the first exclusion of customs duties on the United States and Canada for the first time. For the 16 commodities in the "notice of the Customs tariff Commission of the State Council on the first exclusion list of the first batch of tariffs levied on the United States and Canada" (Taxation Commission Bulletin (2019) No. 6), the exclusion period was extended by one year, and from September 17, 2020 to September 16, 2021, we will continue not to impose the tariffs imposed by us for the anti-US 301 measures.

In its latest monthly report, the International Energy Agency ((IEA)) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for 2020 to 91.7 million barrels per day, and said it would face more demand resistance in the remaining months of the year. IEA said in the report that given that the most easily recoverable demand is already in place, the recovery in oil demand is expected to slow significantly in the second half of 2020, and crude oil demand is expected to fall by 8.4 million b / d in 2020 compared with the same period last year. IEA also said that the economic slowdown could take months to fully reverse and that a potential second round of outbreaks (already happening in Europe) could lead to another reduction in mobility.

From September 15 to 16, the Federal Reserve held a FOMC interest rate meeting and released a summary of its economic forecasts. This is the last interest rate meeting before the November election in the United States, including the adjustment of interest rate policy statements, forward-looking guidelines on how to use them, and prospects for the economy and interest rates. Analysts expect Fed officials to reiterate their dovish stance. Considering that the non-farm and inflation data released by the United States have not deteriorated, the Fed interest rate meeting to be held this week is expected to reaffirm its ultra-loose position, but it is difficult to make new policy changes.

The WTO ruled that the 301 tariff measure taken by the United States against China violates the obligations of the WTO.

The World Trade Organization has ruled that tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese goods worth more than $200 billion are illegal, the Associated Press reported on Sept. 15.

In the evening of the same day, the Ministry of Commerce responded to the "WTO expert Group's report on the WTO dispute over China's lawsuit against the United States on 301 tariff measures, which found that the US taxation measures violated WTO obligations."

A spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce said that China appreciates the objective and impartial ruling made by the expert group.

The spokesman said: it is necessary for China to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests by resorting the erroneous practices of US unilateralism and trade protectionism to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. it also demonstrates China's firm determination to respect WTO rules and safeguard the authority of the multilateral trading system. The multilateral trading system with the WTO as the core is the cornerstone of international trade. China has always firmly supported and safeguarded this cornerstone and respected WTO rules and rulings. China also hopes that the US side will fully respect the ruling of the expert group and the rules-based multilateral trading system, take practical actions, go hand in hand with China and other WTO members, and jointly safeguard the multilateral trading system and promote the stable and healthy development of the world economy.

Soda ash and glass futures both tumbled.

On September 15, domestic commodity futures fell less and rose more, but soda ash and glass futures both tumbled, glass futures fell more than 3%, and soda ash hit the limit twice. As of the close, the main contract of soda ash fell 4.80% to 1667 yuan, while the main contract of glass fell 3.52% to 1646 yuan. Analysts believe that the sharp decline in glass and soda ash is mainly due to changes in their fundamentals.

Wang Yaqian, an analyst of Huarong Rongda Futures Glass, told Futures Daily that from the spot point of view, the adjustment and trial operation of the domestic float glass spot market was mainly carried out, and the quotations of some brands in North China were downgraded. The inventory of production enterprises in some areas increased slightly compared with the previous month, mainly due to the accelerated consumption of self-use inventory by traders and processing enterprises, and the limited acceptance of spot glass prices by real estate enterprises in some areas. In terms of downstream demand, from January to August, the sales area of commercial housing was 984.86 million square meters, down 3.3% from the same period last year, or 2.5 percentage points lower than in January-July.

It is worth noting that Huatai Futures, which topped the list of short positions in glass futures, reduced its holdings by 11575 to 20935 while increasing its holdings by more than 3665 orders on the same day, while Yongan Futures seats increased its holdings by more than 4698 orders while reducing its holdings by 2964 short orders, while reducing its clearance orders to 9384. These seats are more optimistic about the future. On the contrary, Galaxy futures seats increased their holdings by 760 orders while reducing their holdings by more than 1381 orders on the same day, and the clearance orders increased to 27343, indicating that the seat was more pessimistic about the future. Among the top 20 seats in the multi-empty ranking on that day, 7 seats made multiple and empty adjustment operations in the same direction on the positions. Among them, Guotai Junan seats reduced 2869 empty orders while reducing more than 285 orders, the net excess increased to 9066; Huizhou merchants futures seats reduced 1700 empty orders while reducing more than 490 orders, and the number of blank orders decreased to 4317. The above data show that these seats tend to be more optimistic about the future.

"in fact, after the glass market entered September, the first round of peak season was basically over. Traders who had been hoarding goods had gradually begun to eliminate inventory, while terminal manufacturers were also reducing their purchases during the same period, which together led to a sharp decline in glass transactions recently. Inventory began to accumulate slightly." Zhang Chi, chief researcher of Guotai Junan Futures Energy Commodities, believes that the upcoming National Day holiday means more than eight days of stock accumulation for glass, adding to the market's pessimism about glass prices before mid-October to a certain extent. However, Zhang Chi is still optimistic about glass prices after mid-late October, but recently, due to the neutral glass prices, there is no clear rebound time, or will continue to oscillate.

Recently, soda ash futures have fallen sharply in a short period, and the market and expectations have been reversed unexpectedly. The soda ash 2101 contract started a 300-point rally in mid-August, but has fallen for nine consecutive days since its peak of 1822 yuan a tonne on September 3, falling as much as 4.8 per cent in a single day on September 15.

Xu Xiuyuan, a soda ash analyst at Huarong Rongda Futures, believes that the main reason for the sharp drop in soda ash is that the mismatch between supply and demand in August has been alleviated, and fundamentals and expectations have changed. "as the price of soda ash has risen to a high level all the way, the actions of cash companies and traders have changed, from previous hoarding investment to active shipping and on-demand purchasing, downstream end-users are not very active in purchasing, and most of them have a wait-and-see mentality. So the demand side is weak." Xu Xiuyuan said that on the supply side, Haitian and Nanalkali have already started their cars. After being affected by the flood disaster in mid-August, Hebang issued a notice saying that production would be stopped for no more than three months. Recently, there are voices in the market that Hebang's 300000-ton plant will start commissioning in early October, and manufacturers in the northwest region are gradually increasing their start-up.

"the market has a strong reaction to the previous production reduction in Haitian and Hebang, which has clearly implemented the situation of resuming production." According to Zhang Chi, Shandong Haitian has resumed production since Monday, with a load of 50%. Hebang expects to resume production gradually after October and fully around the beginning of November. At that time, the operating rate of soda ash can be increased to about 75%. The shortage of soda ash will be alleviated to some extent.

In Zhang Chi's view, soda ash does not have the conditions to continue to decline. After all, the supply side still has the problem of halting production of Qinghai Salt Lake plant, and the market as a whole has not yet determined that it will enter the high production mode. After a short adjustment, soda ash is still likely to continue to rise, really facing greater pressure or after the end of December.

Xu Xiuyuan also believes that from a seasonal point of view, the alkali plant has more maintenance in winter, and the price will be higher. However, the soda ash industry is still in excess supply, and after the price returns to the top of 1600 yuan / ton, the whole industry will return to profit, the operating rate will gradually resume, and the mismatch between supply and demand will be greatly improved. At the same time, the downstream glass industry will also maintain the rhythm of ignition and resumption of production. It is expected that prices will not rise and fall sharply and will show an oscillating pattern, but we need to focus on environmental protection factors and inventory changes.

IEA monthly report cuts crude oil demand expectations, hurricane season hits international oil prices rebound sharply

International oil prices rebounded on Tuesday as the US hurricane season limited oil supplies in the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition, in the early morning of September 16, data released by the American Petroleum Institute ((API)) showed that as of the week ended September 11, US API crude oil stocks unexpectedly decreased by 9.517 million barrels and expected to increase by 2.049 million barrels; gasoline stocks increased by 3.762 million barrels; refined oil stocks decreased by 1.123 million barrels; after the data were released, US oil rose rapidly in the short term to close at $38.39 per barrel, an increase of 3.03 per cent.

In its latest monthly report, the International Energy Agency ((IEA)) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for 2020 to 91.7 million barrels per day, and said it would face more demand resistance in the remaining months of the year. IEA said in the report that given that the most easily recoverable demand is already in place, the recovery in oil demand is expected to slow significantly in the second half of 2020, and crude oil demand is expected to fall by 8.4 million b / d in 2020 compared with the same period last year. IEA also said that the economic slowdown could take months to fully reverse and that a potential second round of outbreaks (already happening in Europe) could lead to another reduction in mobility.

In the report, IEA said the biggest adjustment in demand is expected to be in the fourth quarter of this year (down by 600000 b / d). The explosive growth of telecommuting in just a few months will put pressure on fuel demand for public transport.

In its monthly report, IEA specifically pointed out that China, which emerged from the comprehensive blockade policy earlier among the major economies, has continued a strong recovery and provided strong support for global demand. In India, by contrast, a full-blown outbreak has caused the biggest drop in demand in the country since April.

Notably, IEA said that even against the backdrop of efforts by Saudi Arabia, Russia and other countries to co-ordinate production cuts, crude oil inventories in developed countries rose further to a record 3.225 billion barrels in July.

"in fact, there has been a significant correction in international crude oil prices since the beginning of September." Li Wanying, a senior energy analyst at Donghai Futures Research Institute, said that from a financial point of view, financial markets were volatile, US stocks fell sharply, and the Nasdaq index once adjusted by more than 10%, triggering capital panic. Risky assets, including crude oil, suffered a bullish sell-off. As of the week of September 8, the fund's net bullish positions in Brent crude oil futures and options fell by 35.71%. In addition, in order to compete for the Asian crude oil consumption market, Saudi Arabia took the lead in reducing the October crude oil supplied to Asian contract customers by 1.50 US dollars, of which the official sales price of light crude oil was reduced by 1.40 US dollars, which also reflects the pessimistic outlook of crude oil demand in the Middle East market.

It is worth mentioning that due to the continuous impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic on oil demand, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries (OPEC) lowered its global oil demand forecast for this year on September 14. In its September oil market report released on the same day, OPEC predicted that the average global oil demand in 2020 will fall by 9.46 million barrels per day from the previous year, more than the 9.06 million barrels expected in August.

The report points out that due to factors such as the continued spread of the epidemic, the downside risk of oil demand continues to rise. At the same time, the prospects for a recovery in economic activity and the potential for oil demand growth are also fraught with uncertainty.

The report believes that in addition to the epidemic, factors such as high debt, geopolitical risks, the international trade situation and the trend of Britain's "Brexit" will also bring uncertainty to the development of the world economy, thus affecting oil demand.

According to the report, international oil prices rose in August, rising by 4% month-on-month, the best performance since February. However, taking into account the above uncertainties, the future rise in international oil prices is weak.

"at present, oil prices have entered the stage of stabilization and consolidation after a sharp fall." An Ziwei, a senior analyst at the East Securities Derivatives Research Institute, believes that the market's concern about the demand outlook has risen further recently, mainly because the recovery of demand is still dragged down by the rebound of the epidemic in Europe and the United States. Since August, the recovery of refined oil consumption in major European and American countries has fallen into a bottleneck, while import demand in the Chinese market has slowed due to high inventories and a rebound in oil prices. In addition, she believes that it is worth paying attention to the negative transmission of deteriorating global refining profits to oil prices. the gasoline and diesel cracking price spreads in major markets have basically shown a weakening trend in the past month, and US refinery operating rates have recovered slowly after the hurricane. even if refinery operating rates fall to their lowest level since May, gasoline cracking price spreads have not been boosted, reflecting weak demand.

On the supply side, the focus of the market is whether this week's OPEC+ September JMMC meeting will propose to adjust the production reduction policy due to falling oil prices and weaker demand expectations. In an Ziwei's view, in the stage of recovery of global supply, countries such as Saudi Arabia are less willing to carry out excess production cuts again, and the focus of OPEC+ 's current policy is still on pressuring countries such as Iraq to realize compensatory production cuts, but Iraq is difficult to significantly reduce production in the short term and may seek to extend the cashing time. Demand for power generation in the Middle East is declining in the summer, and more of the extra supply will be used for exports, which will offset the impact of compensatory production cuts. On the whole, the short-term crude oil market is temporarily lack of new bullish factors support, oil prices are expected to show a weak trend of oscillation in the short term.

In the medium to long term, Li Wanying advises investors not to be overly pessimistic about oil prices. On the one hand, the $40-a-barrel level is an important benchmark for most oil-producing countries, and if oil prices remain low for a long time, OPEC, Russia and the United States will all balance supply and demand through active or passive production cuts, she said. On the other hand, the market is still looking forward to good news such as vaccines, and many countries have introduced a series of economic stimulus plans at the same time. The repair of the price spread structure also reflects that the gradual upward shift of the oil price center of gravity will be a relatively long process. Considering the pressure of warehouse receipts and the volatility of the external environment, it is recommended that investors in the inner market should pay attention to controlling their positions in the near future.

The fundamentals of methanol have improved significantly in the short term.

Affected by the news of unexpected parking and maintenance of the 1.3 million t / a methanol plant in Oman, and against the background of a significant reduction in external supply pressure, the domestic methanol futures 2101 contract showed a sharp rise on Monday night. The intraday price rose to 2116 yuan / ton at one point on Tuesday, the highest level since March this year, and finally closed up 3.37% to 2086 yuan / ton.

Chen Dong, a senior researcher at Baocheng Futures, told Futures Daily that from the point of view of the supply side, overseas methanol plants have been shut down for overhaul since mid-late August. Among them, the device of 2.3 million tons / year of Kaveh in Iran stopped for more than 10 days due to compressor failure. Due to the impact of the hurricane, three units in the United States have been temporarily shut down. at present, a 1.75 million ton / year methanol plant in the United States is still under parking maintenance. At the same time, East and South China have been hit by typhoons one after another, resulting in a large number of methanol import ships delayed or stranded in port, and the external import pressure has been significantly alleviated. It is estimated that China's actual methanol imports in August fell short of expectations, with an estimated import volume of about 1.05 million tons, a month-on-month drop of about 300000 tons. Although some methanol shipments delayed in August arrived in Hong Kong in September, due to the excessive overhaul of overseas installations and poor shipping, it is expected that there will be a large increase in China's methanol imports in September, with an overall estimate of 1.1 million-1.15 million tons.

"under the background of reduced external supply and good domestic olefin demand, the port methanol inventory has been eliminated obviously." Chen Dong said that as of the week of September 10, due to the lifting load of some devices, the domestic MTO operating rate was 88.8%, which continued to increase by nearly 3 percentage points compared with the previous week. Driven by demand and reduced supply, methanol stocks in domestic ports continued to be eliminated on September 11. there were 895000 tons of methanol stocks in coastal areas (Jiangsu, Zhejiang and South China), falling to near the average inventory for the same period in the past six years. 15.33% lower than the year's high (at the end of July).

As for the future, Chen Dong believes that although the fundamentals of the methanol market have improved obviously at present, considering the high operating rate of domestic methanol plants, once the maintenance of external units is completed and the supply pressure is restored, it will not be conducive to the continued increase of methanol futures prices. Therefore, investors should maintain cautious optimism before the National Day and beware of the risk of price weakening caused by increased pressure on the supply side after the holiday.

Cao Bo, methanol analyst for Huarong Rongda Futures, also said that import supply has been reduced and inventories continue to decline this week, and supply pressure has been effectively released. Affected by the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival, downstream enterprises will concentrate on replenishing the stock in the next two weeks, providing a certain support to prices. For the fourth quarter trend, he believes that the winter demand season is approaching, MTO, acetic acid, DMF and other downstream demand is expected to repair, but the market transmission still takes some time, methanol is expected to come out of the bottom in the fourth quarter, still bullish for a long time.

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