After China and the US agreed on an at least temporary reduction in import tariffs, share indices and oil and gas prices rose relatively sharply. This was in the hope that the growth rates of the Chinese economy would not fall too sharply, that demand for natural gas in China would increase - as envisaged - and that LNG deliveries to China would remain relatively high as a result. As a reminder, tariffs on imports of Chinese goods to the USA were reduced from 145% to 30% from 14 May and tariffs on imports of goods produced in the USA to China were reduced from 125% to 10% - for a period of 90 days.

An intensive trade war between the world's two largest economic powers has been successfully avoided - the relevant markets have also "honoured" this with increases in the price of natural gas.

After the Hong Kong stock exchange gave up some of the previous day's gains the day after the sharp rise in the share indices, gas prices are now apparently also following this path. One of the reasons could be that traders were a little too exuberant about avoiding the trade war without being able to analyse the effects of the 30 and 10% tariffs in more detail beforehand due to a lack of time. In other words, they have not satisfactorily answered the question of how consumers will "accept" the future price increases. This could have been done now - especially as the economy in other main purchasing markets besides China is also in a difficult situation, meaning that demand for natural gas may not increase as much.