Tariff refunds are coming

Since founding Ossia 30 years ago in Malibu, the mother-daughter duo behind your favorite skincare has had one mission in mind, creating safe and effective seaweed-infused products like their Ondaria algae body oil. It's been clinically shown to improve elasticity and deeply moisturize. Super rich, fast absorbing, yet never greasy. Get that Golden State Glow wherever you go with Ossia. Save 10% on your first order with Code Spring at ossiamalibu.com or find Ossia at Ulta. We know life is busy. That's why saving money should be effortless. With Atlantic Union Bank's round-up savings, every time you use your debit card, your purchase rounds up to the nearest dollar and automatically goes into savings. So whether you're grabbing coffee, filling the tank, or picking up groceries, you're saving without even thinking about it. It's just one of the ways Atlantic Union Bank makes managing your money easy. Learn more at AtlanticUnionBank.com or today. Atlantic Union Bank. Anyway, you bank. Tariff refunds are coming from Marketplace. I'm Subri Beneshore in New York. The Trump administration says it will start issuing refunds next week for tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled were collected illegally. The administration is starting with the simpler cases. More complicated claims will have to wait. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer has the details. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it'll launch the first phase of its refund system this Monday. CBP says the automated system will be able to process about 82% of the tariff payments it has to refund. They're worth about $127 billion. The system won't be able to handle about $3 billion in more complicated refunds. They have to go through a slower manual process. The refunds are for tariffs that were struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this year. The court did not rule on refunds, leaving that up to the Court of International Trade, which decided importers could get their money back. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said yesterday that new tariffs under a different section of trade law could be implemented this summer and that import taxes could be back, quote, at the previous level by the beginning of July. I'm Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace. A barrel of Brent crude is $96. That is up just a touch after falling yesterday on optimism that the U.S. and Iran could soon have a second round of peace talks. The current ceasefire ends next week. Meanwhile, the U.S. says its military blockade has entirely halted Iranian trade through the Strait of Hormuz. And in the background of all of this are global oil and gas supply chains that are continuing to experience shockwaves from this war. So to get us up to speed on all of that, we are talking to Fernando Valley. He's Managing Director of Energy for the investment firm HedgeEye Risk Management. Fernando, nice to have you back. Happy to be here, Spur. President Trump has said the closure of the Strait of Hormuz could be great for U.S. oil producers. Is that the case? Yes. For the most part, he's correct. There are two challenges there, which is there's a limitation on how much global refiners can take of U.S. crude because U.S. crude produces a lot of gasoline. And the biggest shortfall we have today is diesel. It is not a like-for-like replacement of Middle Eastern crude. Second is there's a question mark on the duration. We think it's going to be a long duration disruption, but there's a question mark to decide how much they're going to invest in this disruption to capture market share. Natural gas production in the Gulf has been damaged. And yet when you look at prices, natural gas in Europe is up 40%. Natural gas in Japan, Korea is up 80%. Natural gas in the U.S., the price actually fell almost 7%. What is going on? Yeah, natural gas is different from oil, a very regional commodity. It is not easy to transport natural gas. The production in the Middle East cutter has been driven to zero. The UAE, which is a small producer of LNG, is also at zero for right now. Although it doesn't seem like there's significant damage on their export capacity, but you're losing production that is not going to be made up. And the inventory levels in Europe are strikingly low, which means they're going to have to buy very aggressively in order to prepare for the winter season of our 2026, 2027. Could the U.S. supply Europe with natural gas? We are. In fact, we are the largest exporter of natural gas now through a lot of development of liquefied natural gas. The challenge is that it takes a really long time to build a liquefied natural gas facility. We do have some coming online in 2026, but what we've already lost in LNG supply so far in this war and the fact that we lost 70% of the Kataari supply for three to five years has already erased all of the growth that was expected for 2026. Fernando Valley is Managing Director of Energy at Hedge Eye Risk Management. Fernando, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. So, United Airlines has floated a merger with American Airlines. United CEO Scott Kirby discussed the idea with President Trump earlier this year, according to multiple published reports. This potential merger would create the world's largest airline. Daniel Ackerman reports on where the idea came from and what it could mean for travelers. For years, domestic airlines have complained of unfair competition from foreign ones. A lot of these international carriers coming in, they're still subsidized to an extent by their government. Dan Bubb of the University of Nevada Las Vegas says Qatar Airways and Etihad from the UAE have both been expanding their offerings to the U.S. And he says the influx may have contributed to this proposed merger between United and American. They're seeing these other airlines and saying, wait a second, they're going to control our market, they're going to price us out. A merger this big is sure to face antitrust scrutiny. American Airlines is the largest U.S. carrier by passenger volume and United is near the top also, says Richard Abulafia of Aerodynamic Advisory. The idea of them combining would be, well, tectonic. He says smaller mergers in the past haven't caused major fare hikes. And to avoid that here, Abulafia says regulators could determine which routes would become near monopolies and require divestitures. Oh my God, such control over Chicago LA. You've got to give up half of those. Abulafia says some of those routes could end up in the hands of competitors like Delta. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. And in New York, I'm Sabri Beneshor with the Marketplace Morning Report. From APM American Public Media. And not to mention the banking system. We're going to visit the world's oldest bank, swim in the thermal spa waters in Montecatini and take in the art of the Uffizi. All of this, and then we'll try to put it all into context with great conversation over even better meals and wine tasting. Please join me and know this, buying into this trip will provide essential support for public media. Discover more about this fall's Tuscany adventure at marketplace.org travel to reserve your spot today. That's marketplace.org slash travel.