Investing.com - Slowly, slowly does it, oil. Crude prices eked out small gains on Tuesday as markets remained on tenterhooks on whether the Trump administration would resort to another delay of the much-ballyhooed Dec. 15 tariff hike on China.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude settled up 22 cents, or 0.4%, at $59.24 per barrel.
U.K. Brent settled up 9 cents, or 0.1%, at $64.34.
Oil prices rose after the Wall Street Journal, citing insiders in the U.S. and Chinese governments, reported that the groundwork was being laid for a deferment of the duties set to kick in on Sunday.
U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators are continuing to haggle over how to get Beijing to commit to massive purchases of U.S. farm products that President Donald Trump was insisting on for a near-term deal, the Journal reported.
Yet White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow, speaking at a Journal conference, downplayed the possibility of a delay.
“The reality is those tariffs are still on the table, the Dec. 15 tariffs, and the president has indicated if the short strokes remaining in negotiations do not pan out to his liking, (then) those tariffs could go back into place,” Kudlow told the conference, CNBC reported.
“There is no definitive decision on that yet,” Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, added.
Markets have been looking out for hints on what the Trump Administration is likely to do ahead of the deadline for the additional tariffs on $156 billion of Chinese goods. Another senior Trump cabinet official, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, suggested that he believed the president did not want to impose the new duties on China, although he said Trump wanted to see "movement" from China to avoid such a move.
The back-and-forth on the tariffs has weighed on both prices and trading volumes of oil since the start of the week. WTI has been struggling to get above $60, while Brent has been trying to clear the $65 bar since Friday’s pact by world oil producers to cut global supply by as much as 2 million barrels, or 2% of global supply, a day.
Tariff concerns aside, oil prices have also struggled to take off this week on data released on Sunday, which showed exports from China unexpectedly fell 1.1% in November.