Morning Brief, Tuesday 30 June

The United States and Iran pulled back from weekend strikes and returned to negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carries about a fifth of global oil and LNG traffic. The fragile 14-point memorandum signed on June 17 reopened flows after four months of conflict and helped Brent crude settle near $72 a barrel on Monday, down 10.6% last week. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said frozen assets would be released and oil sanctions lifted, while technical talks in Doha remained uncertain after Iranian officials denied meetings had been scheduled this week.

Iraq moved quickly to exploit the calmer market. Baghdad demanded a larger OPEC production quota after war disrupted exports and squeezed a budget that gets 88% of government revenue from oil. Recent investment promises from BP, TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil gave Iraq more reason to argue that it should pump more, even as officials denied any formal plan to leave the cartel.

Russia faced a different energy headache. Ukrainian drones have hit eight of Russia's ten largest refineries, and 55 of 83 Russian regions have imposed fuel restrictions. Vladimir Putin admitted a "certain deficit" but said the attacks did not affect the front, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy cast the strikes as pressure on Russia's war economy. Energy is doing what diplomacy often cannot: it is forcing all sides to count costs in public.

The US Supreme Court blocked Donald Trump's attempt to remove Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, leaving lower-court protection in place and saying Fed governors do not serve at the president's pleasure. The majority treated the central bank as a special case, because Congress gave governors staggered 14-year terms and allowed removal only for cause. That protects Cook for now, but it leaves Trump room to try again if he builds a genuine process around the allegations he cited.

The Court moved the other way on the Federal Trade Commission, upholding Trump's firing of Democratic commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and overturning the 1935 Humphrey's Executor precedent. That gives presidents much broader power to remove leaders of independent regulatory bodies, including agencies that oversee communications, labour, finance and environmental rules. The Fed kept its moat, but many other regulators just lost theirs.

Two other rulings added to a rough legal day for Trump. The justices let states count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day if postmarked on time, and they declined to disturb E. Jean Carroll's $5m sexual-abuse and defamation verdict. The court is not simply for or against Trump; it is drawing institutional lines, and markets will care most about the thick one around the Fed.

Europe's heatwave broke records from Germany to Poland and left France counting a heavy human toll. Coschen in Germany reached 41.7°C, Doksany in the Czech Republic hit 41.9°C, Slovakia recorded 41°C at Turna nad Bodvou and Poland logged an all-time high of 40.5°C in Słubice. French health officials estimated 1,200 to 1,400 deaths over three days last week, while Paris morgues transferred bodies to neighbouring regions because they were full.

France is already preparing for another wave. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu kept emergency health plans in place, promised a new extreme-heat civil-security plan and said hospitals would receive 30,000 air-conditioning units. Calls to emergency number 15 rose 60% above normal, and Bordeaux doctors described saving patients with body temperatures of 42°C by placing them on beds of ice.

The weather then flipped from heat to violence. Poland issued its highest storm warnings as polar air collided with the hot dome, forecasting downpours of up to 100 mm, hail and gusts as high as 115 km/h. Railways and city systems are discovering that climate stress does not arrive politely in one form at a time; it buckles tracks, fills morgues and then sends the rain sideways.

Peru's electoral authority confirmed Keiko Fujimori as president-elect after a 22-day count, giving her 9,223,396 votes against Roberto Sánchez's 9,173,755. Her margin was 49,641 votes, or 50.135% to 49.865%, making this the third straight Peruvian election decided by fewer than 50,000 ballots out of more than 18m cast. Sánchez said he would not recognise the outcome, but electoral officials dismissed his appeals and the formal proclamation is due on July 3.

Fujimori, 51, finally won on her fourth presidential run after losing runoffs in 2011, 2016 and 2021. She inherits the burden of her father's name: Alberto Fujimori ruled from 1990 to 2000, then was convicted of corruption and crimes against humanity. Her campaign promised a crackdown on organised crime and broad economic deregulation, a mix likely to please investors looking for order and worry voters who remember authoritarian habits.

The harder problem is governability. Peru has had eight presidents in the past decade, and Congress has often used "moral incapacity" to remove leaders. Fujimori's victory is legal, narrow and combustible; her first mandate is less a blank cheque than a receipt for half the country, rounded up by a whisker.

South Korea launched three AI-era mega-projects with Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, SK Group, GS Group, Naver and Hyundai Motor Company lined up behind the state. The centrepiece is an 800 trillion won ($518bn) semiconductor hub in the southwest, where Samsung and SK Hynix plan new fabrication plants. A second project directs $357bn into large-scale AI data centres, while a third pushes physical AI and humanoid robots, including Hyundai's plan to commercialise Boston Dynamics robots by 2028.

The plan rides an export boom that is already reshaping the economy. A Reuters poll forecast June exports up 61% from a year earlier, the strongest pace since October 1978, after semiconductor shipments jumped 188.4% in the first 20 days of the month. Chips accounted for 41.2% of total exports, and Samsung and SK Hynix have reported record profits as demand for high-bandwidth memory feeds AI model growth.

Execution will bite. SK Hynix chairman Chey Tae-won warned that its Yongin cluster took nine years to establish, and the southwest hub will need land, power, water and workers. Seoul is trying to spread growth beyond the capital region, but a chip boom that lifts exports, house prices and labour anxiety at once is still a boom with sharp edges.

Comcast announced a tax-free spin-off of NBCUniversal and Sky into a separate public company, leaving the remaining Comcast focused on Xfinity broadband, wireless and business services. Mike Cavanagh will lead the new NBCUniversal, while Michael Angelakis will run the broadband-centred company. Investors liked the admission that pipes and programming now need different stories: Comcast shares rose around 7% by midday, and Charter Communications jumped nearly 13% as traders sniffed at possible consolidation.

The split follows a wider media shake-out, including the planned Warner Bros. Discovery sale to Paramount Skydance and Lionsgate's Starz separation. Comcast's market value had sagged near $83bn, roughly equal to its net debt, while broadband subscribers began to shrink and Starlink loomed over legacy cable. Brian Roberts says the move is not a prelude to deals, which is exactly the sort of sentence dealmakers frame and hang on a wall.

British American Tobacco offered the harsher version of focus. It will cut 5,500 jobs and outsource 3,500 roles, affecting about a fifth of its 47,000 workers, as it hunts £600m of annual savings by 2028 and shifts cash toward smoke-free products. Old cash machines can still throw off money, but they now need surgery, not polish.