Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.
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Oil rallies yet again as Iran strikes several tankers in the Persian Gulf. Plus, President Trump returns to the tariff drawing board, targeting a number of big exporters. And a new study finds that AI isn't lightening workloads. Quite the opposite.
And so basically the conclusion was that AI doesn't necessarily create as much efficiency as many had hoped. What it instead does is replaces that with even more work and different kinds of work, but more work nonetheless.
It's Thursday, March 12th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. The war in the Middle East is causing the biggest disruption to oil markets ever seen, according to the International Energy Agency.
The IEA this morning slashed its forecasts for oil supplies, saying it now expects supply to grow by just 1.1 million barrels a day this year, a dramatic cut from the 2.4 million daily barrels expected previously. All supply growth is now expected to come from outside of the OPEC-plus alliance and
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Chapter 2: What are the latest developments in the Iranian attacks affecting oil prices?
Tell us what we're seeing there, specifically in the U.S. so far.
The conflict in the Middle East has very quickly filtered through into gas prices at the pump for Americans. Across the U.S., gas prices have risen about 20% since the attacks on Iran. But if you look at specific states, the move has been much more dramatic. For example, in California, gas prices are nearly at $5.40. In some areas, it's less than that. parts of the Midwest.
But this is very quickly filtering through into people's everyday lives. And that has a big economic consequence because the more you spend on gasoline, the less you have to spend elsewhere.
Bad news for households and probably other businesses reliant on fuel costs as well.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What insights does the new AI study provide on workplace productivity?
I mean, for companies, energy prices are a huge input for a lot of industries. So if you think about tourism operators, cruise lines, airlines, they have been hit pretty hard by the conflict in the Middle East. It'll very quickly raise their prices. We're already seeing airfares going up.
For companies that use a lot of energy for production, steel companies, companies in the industrial sector, this also has a big impact. The longer this goes on, the more it filters through to everything. So pretty much everything we have in our lives is transported to us by ship, by truck. All of those prices go up whenever fuel prices go up.
OK, so there's our inflationary risk. Beyond the U.S., there are other losers on the energy front, unsurprisingly, as well.
Yes, most of the world will see inflation rise because of this, especially import dependent countries like Japan. China is the largest crude importer in the world. They're seeing higher energy prices. Europe in particular depends quite a lot on imported energy for about 60% of its energy supply.
So all of these countries are seeing energy prices go up and that is expected to drive up inflation and that is expected to contract growth.
The Gulf, particularly hard hit as well, even though often in conflicts, their energy exporting status has been a bit of a cushion for them.
It's probably no surprise that the Gulf is the most exposed part of the world to this. Obviously, a lot of these countries in the Gulf are major energy exporters, but they can't actually sell it because the ships are getting attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. Their facilities are getting attacked. So a lot of them have shut down production or drastically pared it back.
which means they actually can't capitalize on this rise in energy prices at all. And this will have an economic impact for economies in the Gulf. If this war is brief, they could see their economies contract by about 2% this year, according to Capital Economics. But if this drags on, which increasingly looks like it will, that could move to a 15% contraction, which is quite dramatic.
And one of the other areas where the Gulf is very vulnerable is on tourism. Right now, that's ground to a halt. Flights have been canceled. And so tourism economics is now expecting that international visitors to the Middle East could fall by as much as 30% this year. And that would be a huge loss of revenue. They say about $56 billion in lost revenue for these economies.
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Chapter 4: How is the conflict in the Middle East impacting global oil supply forecasts?
So there are a couple places that stand to win. The most obvious one is Russia, which has been sort of shut out of global energy trade. They've had some buyers like China invest. in India. But the fact that there are so many disruptions from other major oil suppliers has really put Russia back on the map. People want to buy their oil now.
And for Russia, that means they're bringing in a lot more revenue to fund the war in Ukraine. So analysts usually estimate that Russia needs oil to be about $59 a barrel to balance its budget. It's far above that now. So for Russia, this has been a big win. Some of the Latin American economies, Venezuela in particular,
Also being reintegrated into the global oil trade, starting to increase production again could benefit Canada, probably see a bit of a growth impact Norway as well. But a lot of these economies as well will see a little bit of inflation because even though they produce a lot of energy themselves, it's still a global market.
So they still will also see prices rise at the pump and higher prices for things like airfare.
I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal reporter Chelsea Delaney. Chelsea, thanks as always. Thanks for having me. And we want to know how volatile energy and commodity prices are affecting you or your business. Are you rethinking your plans? Is your bottom line being impacted? And what about your pricing strategy?
Let us know by sending a voice note to WNPOD at WSJ.com or by leaving us a voicemail at 212-416-4328. Just make sure to include your name and your location so we can use your comments on the show.
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Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn is backing President Trump's call to eliminate the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation. Trump has been pushing Senate Majority Leader John Thune to find a way to pass the Save America Act, which would impose strict new voter ID requirements nationwide and which Trump has called critical to GOP success in the midterms.
The Senate has 53 Republicans, and it would take just 51 to change the filibuster rule. However, at least four GOP senators have publicly said they oppose such a move. And two others, West Virginia's Shelley Moore Capito and Wyoming's Cynthia Loomis, voiced their concerns about the move yesterday.
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Chapter 5: Who are the economic winners and losers from the current oil supply disruption?
And that is backed up by another study underway at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, which found that work has intensified for people using AI tools.
And so employees were either working at faster paces or taking on broader scopes of tasks. After they had done their original work, if you will, with AI, they just found more work to do. And sometimes it involved work that was beyond their job descriptions. You know, the dream goal is AI will free us up to do more, you know, creative work or engaging work or more thoughtful work.
And this study is showing that that's not quite happening yet. And so companies and employees need to figure out a way to make AI truly free them up to do more creative and engaging work rather than just more run-of-the-mill work.
And that's it for What's News for this Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.
Enterprises are already creating efficiencies with agentic AI, particularly in areas like finance, HR, and IT, says Jason Gerzades, CEO of Deloitte U.S. Those will continue to proliferate and strengthen, and it'll change the work that gets done, and work will increasingly be delivered through agentic capabilities.
Garzadas believes the most transformative impacts of agentic systems are still to come. It will fuel innovation. It will fuel the pivot into market creation, market diversification, strategies that will open up new markets to clients and to organizations who are looking for growth and looking for differentiated access to new markets, which I think is the most exciting thing.
Visit Deloitte.com to learn how your enterprise can help successfully leverage agentic AI.
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Chapter 6: What are the economic implications of rising gas prices for American households?
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