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Schork Group CEO Stephen Schork initially predicted that Brent oil would reach $ 116 a barrel this month, noting that it took only a few days to reach that value.

San Francisco became the first city in the United States to reach an average of $ 5 a gallon, according to an industry expert, as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine points to oil prices that exceeded $ 113 in trade on Thursday.

“It was pretty ugly because gas prices are rising nationally, but nowhere has the pain been more significant than in California, where prices have crossed the 5-gallon mark,” Patrick De Haan, head of oil analysis for GasBuddy, told FOX Business on Thursday.

OIL PRICES JUMP TO $ 110 a barrel, despite deliveries

Currently, the state average for a gallon of regular gasoline in California is $ 4,940, according to AAA. That’s a significant jump from the national average of about $ 3,728, according to AAA.

RUSSIA INVASES UKRAINE: LIVE UPDATES

De Haan said prices “will continue to move north” and could even reach $ 5.35 a gallon by the end of March.

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For several weeks, there have been widespread fears that sanctions against Russia will threaten the global oil market, which is already facing limited supplies, and will ultimately lead to higher gas prices for American motorists.

This week, the United States and other major governments agreed to release 60 million barrels of crude oil from reserves to stabilize supplies, but failed to allay concerns about Russia’s attack on Ukraine as oil prices continued to rise.

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The loss of 10 million barrels per day from oil production “cannot be offset by scarce oil spills,” De Haan said, citing 60 million barrels of crude oil from reserves.

“It will probably take more than 100-200 million barrels to have a big effect,” he added.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ikea, the world’s largest furniture company, has 17 stores in Russia. The company said the conflict had a “huge human impact” and “leads to serious disruptions in the supply chain and trading conditions”. As a result, it decided to suspend all production and trade operations in Russia, as well as all trade with the country and its ally Belarus. Dozens of Western companies have left or suspended operations in Russia in response to the invasion, sanctions and disruptions.

Ikea said 15,000 workers would be directly affected by the shutdown in the region. But the company will continue to pay them, at least for a while.

“The ambitions of the company groups are long-term and we have provided employment and income stability for the near future and provide support to them and their families in the region,” the company said in a statement.

Ikea also announced an “immediate donation of 20 million euros ($ 22 million) in humanitarian aid to those forcibly displaced by the conflict in Ukraine,” in response to an urgent call from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The parent company Ingka Group is one of the largest mall operators in Russia. He said his Mega malls would continue to operate to deliver food, clothing and goods to the Russians.

H&M

Clothing company H&M Group (HNNMY), which has 168 stores in Russia, said late Wednesday that it had also decided to temporarily close the store in Russia.

“H&M Group takes care of all colleagues and joins all those in the world who call for peace,” said a statement from the Swedish fashion retailer. “The clothes and other necessities were donated by the company.”

Ikea and H&M are joining a growing number of international companies, including Apple (AAPL), Disney (DIS) and Ford (F), which are canceling operations in Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine.

– Chris Liakos of CNN contributed to this report.

March 3 – Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc. (TSLA.O), said on Thursday that he was inviting the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to hold a vote at the California carmaker’s factory.

The announcement came when the billionaire entrepreneur criticized the Biden administration and Democrats for proposing an additional tax incentive of $ 4,500 for electric vehicles made in US-made unions. Tesla and foreign carmakers have no unions in their US plants. Read more

Organizing a Tesla plant would be a great victory for the UAW, which has largely failed to win the support of workers in foreign car assembly plants or starter electric vehicles, many of which are in the southern United States. Tesla also has a plant in Austin, Texas.

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In his tweet on Thursday, Musk said the real challenge is negative unemployment in the Gulf region, and if people do not compensate well, they will be forced to leave because they have many offers.

“I would now like to invite the UAW to hold a union vote when it is convenient for them. Tesla will do nothing to stop them, “he said.

The UAW had no immediate comment on Musk’s tweet, but analysts said his actions over the past year were inconsistent with rhetoric.

Under federal law, at least 30 percent of factory or company workers must sign a petition indicating that they want to join a union in order to hold elections. Usually, unions like the UAW will not seek elections unless they feel they have the support they need to win the support they need from the majority.

Musk also faced the wrath of the U.S. National Labor Council, which ruled last year that the company had violated U.S. labor laws and ordered Tesla to delete his 2018 tweet, which said employees would they lose their stock options if they form a union. Read more

Tesla subsequently appealed the NLRB’s decision to the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals, and the case is still pending.

The NLRB also ordered Tesla to propose the reinstatement of a former employee, as well as repeal the 2017 rules that banned the distribution of trade union literature in his parking lot during non-business hours and the rules that prohibit the distribution of union stickers, leaflets and brochures without prior permission.

Tesla has also been affected by a series of cases of racial discrimination and sexual harassment by current and former workers. The California Civil Rights Agency has also filed a lawsuit accusing Tesla of failing to deal with widespread racist behavior at its Fremont assembly plant for years.

Tesla has said it does not tolerate discrimination and has taken steps to address workers’ complaints.

US President Joe Biden has often praised the electric vehicle (EV) efforts made by automakers at Detroit General Motors Co. (GM.N) and Ford Motor Co. (FN), including during his speech on the state of the Union in Tuesday, although they sell less EV than Tesla.

Last month, Biden, whom Musk likened to a “wet sock puppet” earlier this year, acknowledged Tesla’s leadership in electric cars after Musk repeatedly complained that he had been ignored. Last fall, Musk said Biden’s electric car policy seemed to be controlled by unions. Read more

Last November, 10 environmental and advocacy groups, including Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the League of Conservation Voters, called on startup electric car maker Rivian Automotive (RIVN.O) to work with working groups to ensure a clean future and high-paying jobs. and allow a union voting process in their factories. Read more

Workers at Rivian’s Normal, Illinois, plant are not unions. Rivian had previously declined to comment on the topic and could not be found immediately Thursday after Musk’s tweet.

Officials from the startup for electric vehicles Lucid Group Inc (LCID.O), which has a plant in Arizona, also could not be found for comment on Thursday.

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Report by Ben Kleiman in Detroit, Bhargav Acarya in Bengaluru and Hyunju Jin in San Francisco; Edited by Subhranshu Sahu and Nick Zieminski

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On Twitter late Wednesday night, Musk said Tesla could only hire and retain workers in the current, very tight labor market, paying and treating them well, and not worrying about the company’s unions vote.

“I would now like to invite the UAW to hold a union vote when it is convenient for them. “Tesla will do nothing to stop them.” tweet.When a rock legend Gene Simmons In response to Biden’s tweet, which suggested that the president did not mention Tesla because it was not a union and was based in Texas, a state with a “right to work”, Musk said that the company had not closed its plant. in California and is actually considering expanding it. He then proposed that the union hold a vote. Musk followed later tweeting that the compensation of workers in the Tesla plant is the highest in the automotive industry. Most Tesla employees receive stock options, which can be very lucrative given the stock’s performance in recent years. Musk threatened that workers could lose that benefit if they voted for a union, a position that a California labor judge ruled was illegal against employees’ right to freely choose whether to organize or not. Workers on stock options that have already been accumulated cannot be withdrawn if they later vote in favor of unionization.

Workforce worldwide

The company’s dossier shows that Tesla has nearly 100,000 employees worldwide at the end of last year, but does not show the division between its plants in California, Texas, Nevada, West New York, Shanghai and a new plant to open outside Berlin. . .

The UAW has no immediate comment on Musk’s proposal to hold a vote. She has been trying to put the California plant into operation since it began production a decade ago.

The UAW and the National Labor Council, the government agency that monitors union voting, have repeatedly cited Tesla and Musk of illegal or improper anti-union activities, including allegations that the company is firing employees who support and promote the union.

Usually, union voting takes place when at least one third of the employees in a company or a specific workplace sign cards with a request to be presented. And unions do not usually submit cards to demand elections unless they have significantly more support than that, most often from the vast majority of workers.

In some cases, a company will agree to recognize a union without a vote, usually as part of an agreement with a union that already represents its employees in other facilities. The employer may also agree to vote without the union filing cards, but it is unclear whether Musk did so in this case, as offering elections on Twitter is not an official filing with the NLRB.

When organizing polls, employers almost always lobby workers to vote against, arguing that it will be worse for them under the leadership of the union. Even when employers remain neutral, as was the case with the UAW vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee eight years ago, outside groups opposing unions can lobby workers to vote against and win the organizing effort.

It is also unclear whether Musk is proposing to remain neutral if the vote is actually scheduled, and whether such a vote will only take place at Tesla’s plants in relatively pro-Union California or Nevada, or involve employees at the newly opened facility outside Austin, Texas.

Great impetus for union efforts

Organizing a high-profile company like Tesla would be one of the biggest victories of the labor movement in the United States in decades, said Alexander Colvin, a professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

“That would be a decisive success,” Colvin said. “That would be up there with the successful organization of Amazon (AMZN).”

Trade union membership across the country fell to just 10.3 percent of all workers and only 6 percent of private sector workers, down 16.8 percent in 1983 when the Ministry of Labor began tracking data. Organizing campaigns is crucial for unions to regain some of their lost power.

But lately, unions are more likely to lose high-level votes, such as recently at Amazon’s Alabama warehouse. These elections are resumed right now after a finding of misconduct by the leadership during the initial vote. A small, independent union, Starbucks Workers United, has had some success in setting up separate coffee chain stores, winning votes in two locations in Buffalo and one in Mesa, Arizona. But these are just three of the 9,000 American stores owned by Starbucks.

Marlboro cigarette pack.

Daniel Acker Bloomberg | Getty Images

Rising gas station prices are likely to hurt demand for cigarettes, as smokers have less money to spend on impulse purchases while refueling, according to a new Barclays report.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has boosted oil prices in recent days as the United States and other Western countries have imposed sanctions on Russia, although so far only Canada has banned crude oil exports from the country.

Earlier on Thursday, US oil, West Texas Intermediate oil futures, were trading at prices last seen during the financial crisis in September 2008, while Brent crude oil peaked in May 2012.

In addition to its huge energy exports, Russia is also the world’s largest exporter of fertilizers and cereals. Experts believe that the prices of a wide range of products may rise, but cigarette manufacturers such as Altria and British American Tobacco are likely to be among the companies that are seeing declining demand due to higher oil prices.

Barclays analyst Gaurav Jain estimates that a 1% increase in oil prices will lead to a 0.1% drop in US cigarette volume. Jain compares the current jump in oil prices with their sharp decline in 2014-2016. In 2015, the volume of cigarettes in the United States was approximately equal, after shrinking in 2014.

“The trend seems to suggest that as consumers save more money at the gas station and go to the attached store, they buy more cigarettes (impulse purchase item). Now that oil prices are rising, the opposite could happen,” he wrote. note to customers on thursday.

Cigarette smokers have already come to terms with higher prices as tobacco companies seek to protect their profit margins from inflation. Yet, while CEOs of packaged consumer goods companies say they have not seen consumers choose cheaper alternatives or skip a purchase altogether, categories that favor lower-income consumers, such as tobacco and beer and energy drinks are already seeing consumers trade down, RBC That’s what capital markets analyst Nick Modi said.

For fiscal 2022, Jain from Barclays predicts that the volume of cigarettes in the United States will fall by 5%, but prices will rise by 7%. Looking for cheaper alternatives, some consumers are likely to turn to other tobacco substitutes to satisfy their nicotine cravings, such as e-cigarettes or modern oral nicotine bags.

STOCKHOLM, March 3 – IKEA, the world’s largest furniture brand, is closing its stores in Russia and cutting off all supplies to the country and ally Belarus, joining a wave of Western companies restricting business with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. .

The news, announced Thursday, came after manager retail owner of IKEA Ingka Group told Reuters, it is now expected producer of budget furniture to raise prices by an average of 12% this fiscal year, compared with 9% noted earlier amid rising raw material costs and supply chain disruptions. Read more

“The devastating war in Ukraine is a human tragedy and our deepest empathy and concern is for the millions affected,” Inter owner IKEA and Ingka Group said in a joint statement.

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“The war has both a huge human impact and serious disruptions in the supply chain and trade conditions, which is why groups of companies have decided to temporarily suspend IKEA’s operations in Russia,” they said.

Ingka Group, which is one of the largest owners of shopping centers in the world, said its 14 malls in Russia, called “Mega”, remain open.

While many international companies have already stopped its activities in Russia because of the war and subsequent sanctions against the country, IKEA is one of the first who also stopped business with Belarus. Read more

We could not offer safety and security to the people working in our supply chain – crossing the border, etc. it was just too risky. Then, on top of that, the consequences of various sanctions in general made it simply impossible to work anymore, “Inter IKEA’s chief business supply manager Henrik Elm told Reuters about Belarus.

Inter IKEA is responsible for the supply, while Ingka Group is a major global retailer with 17 stores in Russia and one distribution center. In the year to last August, Russia was the 10th-largest market for IKEA in retail sales of 1.6 billion euros (1.8 billion dollars), or 4% of total retail sales.

The company’s logo is seen outside the IKEA Group store in Saint-Herblain near Nantes, France, March 22, 2021. REUTERS / Stefan Mahe

Read more

The decision to suspend operations in Russia affects 15,000 employees, and Ingka Group’s retail operations manager Tolga Onju said in a joint interview with Elm that all staff will be paid in rubles for at least the next three months.

“The groups of companies will provide employment and income stability and provide support to them and their families in the region,” IKEA said.

IKEA manufactures chipboard and wood products at three sites in Russia and has about 50 direct suppliers in the country that produce a wide range of goods. Most of the products made in Russia are sold in Russia.

Goods made in Russia and exported to other markets account for less than 0.5% of IKEA’s products. Most goods made in Belarus, which is a pure supply market for IKEA, are sold in Russia and consist mainly of wood-based products and mattresses and sofas.

Elm said the decisions were made before the European Union approved new sanctions against Belarus on Wednesday over its supporting role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Read more

Elm said it was too early to say whether Inter IKEA would further raise prices for store owners as a result of the crisis in Ukraine.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation.” Read more

(1 dollar = 0.9028 euros)

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Report by Anna Ringström Edited by Mark Potter and Susan Fenton

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The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.76% in the week ending March 3, up from 3.89% the previous week, according to Freddie Mac.

Interest rates fell as a result of declining yields on US government bonds this week as investors switched to bond security amid growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine, said Sam Hatter, Freddie Mac’s chief economist.

“As long as inflationary pressures remain, the cascading effects of the war in Ukraine have created market uncertainty,” Hatter said. “Interest rates are therefore expected to remain low in the short term, but are likely to increase in the coming months.”

Experts and analysts have predicted a fairly steady rise in mortgage rates this year, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, followed by severe economic sanctions, has created uncertainty.

“Investors are concerned about the deepening conflict between Russia and Ukraine and rising oil prices and are wary of the side effects of growing economic sanctions,” said George Ratiu, economic research manager at Realtor.com.

He said markets are focused on rising inflation and expect the Federal Reserve to continue with a 25 basis point increase in its upcoming meeting later this month.

“Market volatility and rising oil prices are likely to lead to greater fluctuations in bond yields, while inflation will continue to push upward interest rates on mortgages,” Ratiu said.

Mortgage applications are declining

Mortgage applications fell in the last full week of February, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, in part in response to rising interest rates.

Applications for home loans remain weak, said Joel Kahn, associate vice president of economic and industrial forecasting at the MBA. Meanwhile, the average loan size has risen again – to a new record of $ 454,400 – an indication that house prices are still rising and a larger share of mortgage activity is seen at the higher end of the market, he said.

“We will continue to assess the potential impact on mortgage demand from the sharp drop in interest rates this week due to the invasion of Ukraine,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ratiu said, real estate markets are seeing an early start to the spring shopping season, with unusually high demand and record low inventories continuing to boost house prices.

“At today’s rate, the average home buyer will pay more than $ 278 a month more than a year ago to pay off his mortgage,” Ratiu said. “Rising prices and higher prices are creating challenges for first-time home buyers, making them difficult to make in light of higher monthly spending on food, petrol, clothing, cars and healthcare.

Ned Davis US chief strategist Ed Klisold and Aegon Asset Management chief macro strategist Frank Rybinski discuss the impact of the Russia-Ukraine crisis on the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates and US markets.

US stocks gave up gains as oil prices remained high as Russia developed Ukraine. Investors are also watching Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who is on Capitol Hill for a second day of economic testimony.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell above 100 points or 0.4%, down 200 points, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell 0.5% and 1%, respectively.

Powell said he supported the traditional 0.25 percentage point increase in interest rates instead of the larger increase recommended by some politicians. Powell also said the impact of the Russian attack on the US economy was “very uncertain”.

RUSSIA INVASES UKRAINE: LIVE UPDATES

Oil prices continued to rise as supply and supply concerns persisted due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

US crude reached $ 113.06 a barrel before falling. Brent, based on the price of international oil, moved to $ 115.08 a barrel in London. As a result, large oil companies remain in focus.

POWER OF THE FED WILL OFFER 25 BPS Increase in the rate of the meeting in March

AG URGES BIDEN TO TAKE STEPS FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE WITH DECLARATION OF PERFORMANCE PRICES

OPEC and its allies, including Russia, have decided to maintain a 400,000-barrel-a-day increase in March despite rising prices and ignoring consumer calls for more crude oil.

In shares, Kroger shares rose after better-than-expected earnings and raised their forecast.

Best Buy also performed better than expected, and the forecast sent stocks higher.

Carmakers remain in focus after Ford Motor Co. said it is accelerating its transformation into an electric vehicle company and is dedicating its EVs and internal combustion operations to deal directly with Tesla.

In the economic news, the Ministry of Labor announced that the weekly unemployment applications were 215.00, a slight decrease of 232,000 in the previous week. Ongoing claims, which track the total number of unemployed workers collecting benefits, have changed slightly, to 1.476 million, which remains below pre-pandemic levels.

EMPLOYERS ADD 475,000 JOBS IN FEBRUARY: ADP

The big report for the month comes on Friday, when the government publishes the February Jobs Report. The US economy is estimated to have added 400,000 new non-agricultural jobs.

The “Now Hire” sign in a business in Richmond, Virginia. (AP Photo / Steve Helber / AP Newsroom)

Traders will also be able to examine several data points, including revised productivity and labor costs for the fourth quarter.

A key number to keep in mind is when the Supply Management Institute publishes its PMI for non-production in February. This important indicator for activity in the services sector is expected to rise to 61.0, slightly up from 59.9 in January.

The sales department will also publish data on factory orders in January. Watch for a 0.7% increase, reversing a 0.4% decline in December.

Bitcoin is trading over $ 43,000.

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Ken Martin of FOX Business and the Associated Press contributed to this report.