Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk. Here's what's moving the tape right now.
Gasoline prices hit a record high over Labor Day weekend, and the pressure may not ease anytime soon. Refining capacity has been quietly shrinking for years, and with Middle East tensions flaring, the supply chain from crude to pump is under real stress. Traders are watching the crack spread closely.
Those tensions center on the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran claims to have seized an American underwater drone. Washington is pushing back hard, calling the vessel old, malfunctioning, and dead in the water before Iran ever touched it. Still, the incident adds another layer of friction in a waterway that handles roughly twenty percent of global oil flows, and markets are paying attention.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is turning up the heat on Ford, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sending a letter to CEO Jim Farley expressing what the department called profound concern over the automaker's ties to Chinese firms. The move signals that scrutiny of American companies with Chinese partnerships is intensifying at the federal level, and Ford is now squarely in that crosshair.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
