The renewed U.S.-Chinese trade tit-for-tat threatens to limit U.S. crude oil exports to China that have been gaining pace in recent months and eating into OPEC’s share in the market, a market that is setting the pace of global oil demand growth. The heightened trade tension between the United States and China over the past week resulted in China threatening to slap a 25-percent import tariff on crude oil and refined oil product imports from the United States. If this threat turns into reality, U.S. crude oil—which is currently in high demand in Asia due to the wide $9-a-barrel discount to the Brent Crude international benchmark—will become uncompetitive. A potential tariff would also limit the revenues of U.S. oil exporters and force them to accept even steeper discounts to find new buyers of their oil to replace the sales in their second-largest single oil export market after Canada, analysts […]