Sanctions against Russia; The US stock market fell
White House spokesman Jen Saki told reporters Monday that Joe Biden’s government has not yet made a decision to ban oil imports from Russia, IRNA reported Tuesday, quoting Sputnik news agency.
The US president appears to be planning to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to increase production and even seek peace with Venezuela.
“Stocks in the United States have been declining for weeks due to fears of war in Ukraine, and this downward trend continues,” the Russian news agency reported.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 797.42 points to 32,817.38 yesterday, Monday. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 482.48 points to 12830.96 and the S&P 500 Index fell 127.78 points to 4201.09.
“Rising oil prices are destabilizing the market,” Jay Hatfield, chief executive of Infrastructure Investment Advisers, told The Wall Street Journal. The market is concerned about the war and its impact on economic growth and American companies.
The decline in the US stock market index while US banks have also suffered severely due to the current situation, so that “USBankorp” (American Financial Services and Banking Holding Company) lost 3% of its value. Citigroup (a financial services company and multinational US investment bank) also lost 14 percent of its value. The devaluation also included other service companies such as McDonald’s, Starbucks and Nike, and their shares fell due to rising fuel prices.
US sanctions on the Russian economy have caused chaos in markets around the world, and on Monday, Washington and its allies began discussing a possible ban on imports of Russian oil products, the country’s largest export. Russia supplies 40% of Europe’s gas.
Reports also indicate that Biden is considering a trip to Saudi Arabia to ask the world’s largest oil producer and close ally to increase oil production to offset the loss of possible Russian gas from the market.
At the same time, a group of US diplomats traveled to Caracas to urge Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to separate from Washington’s long-backed Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the aim of lifting Washington’s sanctions against the Latin American country. .
The United States has been working for years to oust Maduro and replace him with opposition leader Juan Guido.
Some worry that rising oil prices could push up inflation in the United States; Inflation is currently at its highest level in 40 years due to the Covid-19 epidemic.