Business
How Blocking Oil and Gas From Leaving the Strait of Hormuz Ripples Around the World
The strait is just 35 miles wide, but before the war began, a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and one-fifth of its gas traversed through the waterway. The choking off of that supply is creating economic shocks around the world. Even nations not heavily dependent on Gulf oil and gas are contending with the consequences.
International oil prices are at their highest levels in years. L.N.G. prices have soared. Rising jet fuel costs are causing flight cancellations. From Tokyo to Vancouver, driving has become considerably more expensive. In Bangladesh, garment factories have begun to sit idle. In Pakistan, the government has established statewide school closures to conserve power.
The price shock is depleting foreign currency reserves and stoking inflation in nations already struggling with rising costs.
Experts have called the current situation a “systemic collapse” of the energy security era established in the 20th century.
Governments worldwide are deploying measures to combat shortages and high energy prices, including the largest-ever release of strategic oil reserves by the United States, Japan, South Korea and others.
For now, energy experts and economists say these stopgap measures are helping shield households and companies from the most acute disruptions, but they warn that the drag on global economic growth will compound if the war persists.
President Trump has pressed for an international naval coalition to break the Iranian blockade of the strait. Over the weekend, he threatened to obliterate parts of Iran if it did not reverse course. Tehran has said “non-hostile” ships can sail through the strait, but it is unclear if any vessels will try.
Methodology
The New York Times identified ports and energy installations in the Persian Gulf affected by the Strait of Hormuz and then used activity tracked by Kpler, an industry data firm, to measure the tonnage of individual shipments flowing out of the region in 2025, as well as their final destinations. The shipping analysis focused on seaborne trade and was limited to the following oil and gas products: crude oil and condensate; gasoline and naphtha; liquefied petroleum gas; gasoil and diesel; kero and jet; fuel oils; and liquefied natural gas. About half of the outgoing shipments made by Iran are estimated by Kpler using satellite imagery.
Job cuts are hammering the tech industry as companies ramp up investments in artificial intelligence.
This week, San Jose-based tech company Cisco said it was cutting fewer than 4,000 jobs or less than 5% of its workforce. Cisco announced the layoffs the same day that the company reported that it grew its revenue to $15.8 billion and net income to $3.4 billion for the third quarter ending in April.
Cisco Chief Executive Chuck Robbins told employees in an email that he’s “confident” that the company will “win in the AI era” but that requires “focus, urgency, and the discipline to continuously shift investment toward the areas where demand and long-term value creation are strongest.”
“This means making hard decisions — about where we invest, how we’re organized, and how our cost structure reflects the opportunity in front of us,” he told employees in the email, which was published on Cisco’s website.
Cisco provides products and services in areas such as networking, cybersecurity and remote work.
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, a professional social network that people use to apply to jobs, is also laying off workers.
Reuters, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported on Wednesday that LinkedIn was laying off 5% of its staff or roughly 875 people.
“As part of our regular business planning, we’ve implemented organizational changes to best position ourselves for future success,” a LinkedIn spokesperson said in a statement.
In a memo published on Business Insider, LinkedIn Chief Executive Daniel Shapero told employees that the cuts would impact its global business organization, marketing and engineering teams. The company, he said, is also focusing on operating “more profitably.”
“We need to reinvent how we work, with agile teams focused on our highest priorities, and by shifting investments toward areas such as infrastructure to fulfill our mission and vision over the long term. This requires hard prioritization and tradeoffs,” he said in the memo.
Amazon, which said in January it was slashing 16,000 jobs, is also making cuts in its selling partner services team. The company didn’t say how many people were laid off.
“We regularly review our organizations to ensure we’re best set up to deliver on our goals. Following a recent review, we’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate a relatively small number of roles in our Selling Partner Services team. We don’t take decisions like this lightly, and we’re committed to supporting affected employees with transitional health care, a separation payment, and outsourced job placement services,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.
The cuts come as other major tech companies this year, including Meta, Block, Oracle and others, lay off thousands of workers.
Cloudflare and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase have also recently announced job cuts. Cloudflare’s job cuts included laying off 224 people in its San Francisco headquarters, a notice to the California Employment Development Department shows.
Some tech companies, which are also selling AI-powered products, are saying that workers can accomplish more with fewer people by using AI to generate code and complete tasks. Others have cited restructuring and cost-cutting to offset the billions of dollars they’re spending on AI infrastructure.
Global mergers are not typically on the agenda of a New York City mayor. But Mayor Zohran Mamdani is weighing in on a proposed deal that he says would financially harm many of the city’s immigrants.
In a letter, Mr. Mamdani urged the New York State Department of Financial Services to block Western Union’s proposed $500 million acquisition of International Money Express, a firm that sends money transfers from the United States to Latin America.
The April 24 letter, which The New York Times obtained, argues that a combination of the companies, both large players in New York City, could lead to higher fees and worse service for customers.
Western Union and International Money Express, known as Intermex, operate retail locations where recent immigrants transfer money, often to relatives in their native countries. These remittances, which total billions of dollars a year, are a vital resource for immigrants who do not have access to traditional bank accounts. Across the United States, remittances have been increasing as immigrants have sent home as much money as they can before they may be deported.
“Remittances are a crucial lifeline for New Yorkers and their communities abroad,” Mr. Mamdani wrote in the letter. He added that the deal “would further strain the already challenging economic circumstances facing New York City’s immigrant communities.”
The deal, announced in August, has been expected to close in mid-2026, subject to approval from authorities including the Justice Department and the nation’s state financial regulators.
In a response to Mr. Mamdani’s letter, Western Union told the Department of Financial Services that the deal would “ensure that accessible and affordable” services remained available for New York City immigrants by helping it compete against online only rivals.
Western Union said it was “committed” to retail remittances, adding that they now account for roughly 60 percent of its revenue.
“Failing to support the combination would merely create the illusion of greater competition by undercutting the ability of Western Union and Intermex, as a combined enterprise, to continue to provide, improve and innovate their services at retail locations,” the company said in its response.
It also said the Department of Financial Services was the only state regulator that hadn’t approved the deal.
In a statement on Wednesday, Western Union said that it was “engaging constructively” with the department as part of the review process and that “we remain confident in the transaction and our ability to meet all regulatory requirements.”
Intermex did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Semafor earlier reported Mr. Mamdani’s letter.
Mr. Mamdani’s role as an antitrust enforcer may be limited, given the relatively few deals that require state or local approval. But one of his influential advisers has a background in bringing a progressive lens to mergers and acquisitions. Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission in the Biden administration, was co-chair of Mr. Mamdani’s transition team after his election in November and remains an outside adviser to him.
By voicing his objection to the Western Union deal, Mr. Mamdani is drawing attention to another issue of affordability, which was a central tenet of his campaign and remains a focus of his fledgling administration, whether the topic is the cost of rental housing or World Cup tickets.
A regional Coca-Cola manufacturer will shut down a plant in Ventura after over 100 years in production.
Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling will close the plant on July 10, the company announced in a recent state filing.
“We regularly assess our locations, products and services to ensure we can continue driving sustainable growth and innovation across our business,” a spokesperson for Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling told SFGate.
Employers must submit a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, to alert employers, state and local officials at least 60 days before major layoffs. The initial notice was submitted Friday.
A total of 85 employees will be affected by the closure, according to the notice. Seventy-eight of them will be reassigned to other facilities, and the rest will be able to apply for open roles at other Coca-Cola plants, a company spokesperson told SFGate.
Operations from the Ventura plant will be transferred to other Southern California facilities.
A spokesperson for Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Coca-Cola shut down a Bay Area plant in American Canyon in late December. That closure affected at least 45 workers, according to the WARN notice. Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling also shut down its Salinas location in June.
Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling is a subdivision of Reyes Holding, which manages major beer and drink distributors and McDonald’s largest global distributor. Reyes Holding began distributing Coca-Cola in 2015 and officially formed Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling in 2022.
The company runs 22 manufacturing centers in California, including two production and distribution centers in Los Angeles. The company operates 50 facilities across 10 states.
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