Morning Brief, Wednesday 15 July

Donald Trump abandoned his plan to charge ships a 20% fee for crossing the Strait of Hormuz after Gulf leaders objected, replacing it with promised trade and investment agreements. The U-turn softened one legal problem but not the military one. The United States kept a blockade on ships entering or leaving Iranian ports, while US forces struck Iran for a fourth day and Iran targeted American allies in the region, including attacks that Jordan said it intercepted. Trump framed the reversal as a practical swap rather than a retreat.

Oil traders calmed a little, not a lot. Brent crude fell back to about $84.5 a barrel after touching more than $87, while West Texas Intermediate retreated to $79 from $81.23. Shipping data showed just five oil, chemical and dry-bulk carriers crossed the strait on Monday, and no oil or liquefied natural gas tankers entered it. That matters because roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supplies normally passes through the 34 km-wide waterway.

Iran rejected the American claim to manage the strait, with Abbas Araqchi saying Tehran would remain its guardian. The argument over tolls may fade, but the operational risk has not: warships, aircraft, insurers and refiners now decide daily whether the Gulf is a market or a battlefield. A fee was bad law; a half-open strait is worse economics.

ICE suspended most immigration-related vehicle stops after federal agents shot dead Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. The Department of Homeland Security said an agent fired after Guerrero tried to flee and had weaponised his vehicle, but surveillance reviewed by reporters showed a white Kia moving slowly while agents surrounded it. Maine Senator Angus King said the agents wore no body cameras, and DHS later told him they had been seeking someone else.

Guerrero’s family said he lived legally in the United States, held a Social Security number and a work permit, and was completing required paperwork. He worked as a cleaner and a DoorDash driver, and lived nearby with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. The shooting was the ninth fatality during immigration operations since the Trump administration began its mass-deportation campaign in January 2025.

The policy change still leaves exceptions for arrest warrants and joint work with partner agencies. That means it pauses a tactic rather than ending it. John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director, questioned the premise of using traffic stops for immigration enforcement at all, especially after at least four vehicle-related deaths and roughly 18 traffic-stop shootings during the crackdown.

The halt shows that operational risk has become political risk, especially when the person killed may not have been the target. Immigration enforcement can survive legal challenge; it struggles more when the dashboard camera is missing and the wrong family is grieving.

Wall Street banks turned the AI infrastructure rush into fee income, trading revenue and record profits. Goldman Sachs lifted investment-banking fees by 55% to $3.40 billion, JPMorgan’s fees rose 30%, and global mergers and acquisitions surpassed $3 trillion in the first half. Bank of America’s sales and trading revenue reached a record $7.1 billion, while combined equities trading across JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi and Bank of America jumped 72% year on year to $19.3 billion.

IBM showed the other side of the same cycle. Its shares fell 25%, the largest one-day drop since at least 1972, after preliminary second-quarter revenue missed expectations and clients redirected spending toward servers, storage and memory to secure scarce AI hardware. Arvind Krishna admitted that large deals slipped and that the company had failed to adapt quickly enough. The result erased $69 billion in market value and hit other software names too.

The split is revealing. Banks earn when companies raise money, buy rivals and hedge volatility; older software suppliers suffer when those same companies raid budgets to pay for chips and data centres. AI has not lifted all boats. It has built a canal and charged rent to whoever controls the locks.

Emmanuel Macron turned his final Bastille Day parade as French president into a display of European rearmament. Nearly 6,700 soldiers marched in Paris with 315 vehicles, 98 aircraft and 31 helicopters, while more than 500 troops from 35 countries joined the allied contingent. Twenty-five Ukrainian soldiers marched at the end, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy watched from the stands as Mirage fighters carrying Ukrainian co-pilots flew overhead.

The choreography followed a Coalition of the Willing summit in Paris, where European leaders discussed long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. Poland then announced that the coalition’s first joint manoeuvre would take place on Polish soil in September, mainly with French and British forces. Germany will not join that exercise, a reminder that Europe’s strategic awakening still travels at different speeds.

Poland wants the drills to prepare command staffs for troop movements and decision pathways, and Donald Tusk has signalled readiness for a more permanent allied presence. Talks may also explore French arms depots in Poland, a useful hedge after the Pentagon unexpectedly halted a rotation of more than 4,000 US soldiers two months ago. Paris, Warsaw and London are not replacing Washington, but they are acting as if American reliability now needs insurance.

Macron’s parade aimed at Moscow, but it also spoke to European voters who have heard years of promises about autonomy. Flags and fly-pasts cannot secure Ukraine. Still, they can make hesitation look lonely, and that may be the first useful thing a parade has done in some time.

Health officials fought two very different outbreaks with the same problem: the numbers lag the disease. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the government has recorded 1,963 Ebola cases and 719 deaths since the outbreak was declared in Ituri province on May 15. The World Health Organization now estimates the true caseload could be two to four times higher, putting infections roughly between 3,900 and 7,800.

The outbreak has spread to North Kivu, South Kivu, Tshopo and Haut-Uélé, and Uganda has recorded 20 cases. More than 90% of infections remain in Ituri, where conflict and distrust complicate tracing. WHO officials said many new reports involve people who died in their communities before reaching care, which breaks the chain of contact tracing just when speed matters most.

In the United States, the CDC confirmed 1,645 lab-confirmed cyclosporiasis cases, with more than 5,100 additional cases awaiting analysis and interviews. Michigan reported 3,309 cases in state data, Ohio’s Toledo-Lucas County recorded 1,119 positives, and 141 people have been hospitalized nationally. Taco Bell removed fresh ingredients at some locations while officials investigate whether lettuce or another produce item links cases across several states.

Ebola and cyclospora do not belong in the same risk category, but both expose the cost of slow detection. Outbreaks begin as biology; they become governance tests when interviews, trust and laboratories arrive late.