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OPEC+ agreed to surge oil output for the third month in a row despite reservations from key member Russia, doubling down on a historic policy shift that has sent crude prices sinking.

Oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia agreed during a video conference on Saturday to add 411,000 barrels a day to the market in July, according to a statement on the group’s website. The hike matches increases scheduled for May and Junemarking a radical reversal from defending prices to actively driving them lower.

“OPEC+ isn’t whispering anymore,” said Jorge Leon, an analyst at Rystad Energy A/S, who previously worked at the OPEC secretariat. “May hinted, June spoke clearly, and July came with a megaphone.”

Officials say the supply hikes reflect Saudi Arabia’s desire to punish over-producing members like Kazakhstan and Iraq, recoup market share lost to US shale drillers and other rivals, and satisfy President Donald Trump’s desire for cheaper oil.

They offer relief to consumers as the northern hemisphere goes into its peak demand season, while also helping central banks grappling with stubborn inflation. Yet the market impact creates financial peril for oil producers around the world, which could be facing a period of prolonged low prices.

Several members expressed reservations during Saturday’s meeting about the speed with which OPEC+ was raising production. Russia, Algeria and Oman wanted a pause in the increases, delegates said, asking not to be named because the information was private.

The difference in views between Moscow and Riyadh, the cartel’s two most powerful members, will come back into play on July 6, when they meet again to discuss output levels for August.

Oil briefly crashed to a four-year low under $60 a barrel in April after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies first announced that they would bolster output by triple the scheduled amount. The move came even as faltering demand and Trump’s trade war were already crushing the market.

While Brent futures have since recovered to trade near $64 a barrel, the International Monetary Fund estimates the Saudis need prices above $90 to cover the lavish spending plans of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The kingdom is contending with a soaring Budget deficitand has been forced to cut investment on flagship projects such as the futuristic city, Neom.

Markets might take Saturday’s agreement as slightly positive because prior to the talks “there were some concerns of a larger increase,” said Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at UBS Group AG.

If Riyadh’s strategy is to discipline the cartel’s quota cheats through a “controlled sweating,” it doesn’t seem to be working.

Kazakhstan, the most blatant offender, continues to exceed its limits by several hundred thousand barrels a day and has publicly stated that it has no plans to atone. Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov told reporters on Thursday that the country can neither enforce cutbacks on international corporate partners, or dial back at state-run fields.

The downturn is, however, taking a toll in America’s shale oil heartlands, where companies like Diamondback Energy Inc. say production has peakeddespite Trump’s promise the country would “drill, baby, drill” in a new energy boom.

Summer Demand

With the hike scheduled for July, OPEC+ will be just over halfway through a road map for reviving 2.2 million barrels a day of output it had idled in recent years — a process that was previously planned to last until late 2026. The group will decide in the coming months how quickly to restore the remainder of supplies it’s still withholding from the market.

For some analysts, increasing supply is entirely logical. Demand will rise over the next few months in the US as drivers take to the roads for summer vacations, and also in the Middle East, where peak use of air conditioning means some barrels will be consumed domestically.

“Fundamentals in the right-here, right-now are strong — inventories are very low,” Amrita Sen, director of research at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd., said in a Bloomberg television interview before the meeting. “It is a good time for OPEC+ to add barrels to the market, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t.”

Nonetheless, further price losses may be in store. JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasts that Brent futures will sink into the “high $50s” later this year as the cartel’s hikes contribute to a global supply glut of more than 2 million barrels a day.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Tech billionaire Elon Musk vowed the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would carry on and he would remain an adviser to President Trump as he bid farewell to his official government role.

Musk joined Trump in the Oval Office for a press conference on Friday for what was his final day as a special government employee. That title carries a time limit of 130 days, meaning Musk will no longer serve in an official capacity.

His departure has fostered uncertainty about who would lead DOGE’s efforts to slash federal spending and the size of government, but Musk said Friday that lower level officials would remain in their roles.

“This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said.

“The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. The DOGE influence will only go stronger,” Musk added. “It is permeating throughout the government, and I am confident that, over time, we will see a trillion dollars of savings and a reduction in — a trillion dollars of waste and fraud reduction.”

Musk told reporters that he will be “visiting here and be a friend and an adviser to the president.”

The Tesla CEO sported a black hat with “DOGE” printed on it and a t-shirt that read “The DOGEFather.” He also had a bruise near his right eye, which Musk said he got from “horsing around” with his young son, X.

Musk was a near-constant presence in Trump’s orbit during his time in government, building a close relationship with the president while chafing at some other administration officials. Musk frequently appeared with his young son, X, in the Oval Office, on Air Force One, and at Cabinet meetings.

Musk had boasted that DOGE would find $1 trillion in savings, though the actual amount was significantly less than that even as his agency canceled millions of dollars in government contracts and oversaw layoffs of thousands of government workers.

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• Section 899 of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” moving through Congress has raised growing alarms on Wall Street, after the once-obscure provision was initially overshadowed by the budget proposal’s estimated impact on the deficit. Deutsche Bank warned that what’s been dubbed the “revenge tax” could further harm the attractiveness of U.S. assets.

As Wall Street continued digesting the myriad line items in the 1,000-page budget bill that passed recently, one part has triggered an especially acute case of heartburn.

Section 899 of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” moving through Congress has raised growing alarms, after the once-obscure provision was initially overshadowed by the budget’s estimated impact on the deficit.

It has been dubbed the “revenge tax” because it would increase rates for individuals and companies from countries with tax policies branded as “discriminatory.” That means foreign investors, who own trillions of dollars in U.S. assets, could face higher levies on passive income like dividends and interest payments.

Investors have already shifted toward Europe and China as President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff agenda has eroded the idea “American exceptionalism.” Meanwhile, foreign investors are showing signs of a buyer’s strike, shunning U.S. assets.

For George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, the idea of a revenge tax could make them even less attractive. It’s also notable in the wake of a U.S. trade court’s ruling Tuesday that invalidated Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, as Section 899 could represent an alternative tool.

“We see this legislation as creating the scope for the US administration to transform a trade war into a capital war if it so wishes, a development that is highly relevant in the context of today’s court decision constraining President Trump on trade policy,” Saravelos wrote in a note.

He pointed out that Section 899 uses taxation on foreign investors as leverage to advance U.S. economic priorities and only has to meet a low bar before it can be enforced.

It would also make covering deficits more difficult by lowering the de facto yield foreign government earn from U.S. Treasury bonds by nearly 100 basis points, Saravelos estimated.

While the ultimate impact could be less than that, the mere introduction of more uncertainty and complexity around investing in U.S. assets “undermines the attractiveness of dollar inflows at a time when this is already put in to question,” he warned.

“It is not unreasonable for the market to conclude that if the President is constrained on using trade policy, taxing foreign capital could be a new means of leverage,” he added.

Even House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, who supports the revenge tax, said during a panel discussion on Friday that he hopes it’s never used and instead acts like more of a deterrent that stops other countries from cracking down on U.S. companies unfairly.

Meanwhile, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan tax scorekeeper for Congress, echoed some of Wall Street’s fears.

Thomas Barthold, the committee’s chief of staff, said in a statement to Bloomberg Tax that Section 899 would lead to a “decline in foreign demand for US direct and portfolio investment.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is asking SpaceX for an investigation into this week’s Starship test flight that ended up spinning out of control and breaking apart.

The FAA said the Starship’s vehicle and booster debris landed within the designated hazard areas and there were no reports of injuries or damage to public property during Tuesday’s flight.

“The mishap investigation is focused only on the loss of the Starship vehicle which did not complete its launch or reentry as planned. The FAA determined that the loss of the Super Heavy booster is covered by one of the approved test induced damage exceptions requested by SpaceX for certain flight events and system components,” the FAA wrote in a statement Friday.

The Starship, the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, recorded its third test flight of this year this week and ninth since testing began in April 2023. It took off from Starbase, Texas, and the first few minutes appeared to go as planned. Around half an hour into the mission, the Starship began to spin out of control and SpaceX lost contact with the booster prior to it hitting the water.

“As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test,” SpaceX said Tuesday.

“Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent. Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote Tuesday night on X, the social platform he bought in 2022.

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• A perfect storm may soon hit leadership in corporate Americawith baby boomers retiring and Gen Z unenthused about climbing the career ladder. However, experts argue that slashing development budgets and stereotyping young people as lazy is only making matters worse.

Who wants to be the boss anymore? According to the headlines, not Gen Z.

The bright young minds of tomorrow are just not striving to climb the corporate ladder as much as their older colleagues, but it’s not coming from a lack of interest in management.

Instead, a generational disconnect in how leaders should wield their power is to blame. Gen Z employees are concerned about leadership’s basic interpersonal skills, and nearly half of them want better communication and teamwork training, according to a recent Korn Ferry report. Major companies like Amazon are cutting middle manager roles, leaving early-career employees left without a model of leadership pathways. About 41% of employees say that their organizations have done away with middle management, according to the same Korn Ferry report.

The pool of future leaders continues to shrink, with layoff uncertainty and disengagement leading to low morale among workers just getting their feet wet in the working world. Over half of Gen Z employees don’t even want to become managers, according to recruitment company Robert Walters. After seeing their bosses get burned out and laid off, it’s not surprising that the youngest generation of workers doesn’t want the same fate. As boomers look to hang up their badges and retire, this growing leadership vacuum threatens the modern workforce.

Gen Z does want to lead—just not the way boomers did

Katie Trowbridge, a multi-generational workplace strategist, is trying to help bridge the leadership gap. She spent twenty-three years as an educator, working with millennials and Gen Zers and identifying their core values, how they work best, and what motivates them.

“[Younger generations] want to have a purpose, and they want to see how what they’re doing matters and has relevancy,” she tells Fortune. Trowbridge argues that this mindset can differ from their predecessors, many of whom were taught to “put your head down and get to work.”
Young people lead with curiosity, Trowbridge argues, and that curiosity should be fostered, not discouraged. She stresses that leaders are failing to coach young staffers because they’re buying into stereotypes around Gen Z’s work ethic.

“We tag them as lazy. They’re not lazy. They are far from being lazy. They just are curious and they want knowledge,” she says. “They’re just asking us to teach them how to do it.”

While Gen Z may be asking, Trowbridge doesn’t believe that today’s leaders are answering.

Corporate investment in leadership development has been dropping substantially, with average budgets dropping 70% from January 2023 to January 2024, according to recent data from LEADx. Budgets have slipped even further, with a 15% drop from January 2024 to the same time this year.

What bosses can do to connect with young workers

Leaders shouldn’t assume that their workers have the same priorities as they do, especially when it comes to work-life balance. Trowbridge notes that long gone are the days when a job takes precedence over all else.

“One of the things that millennials and Gen Zers are getting right is that they are not allowing work to be the thing that defines them.” It is in the best interest of current leaders to abandon much of the rigidity that has defined work culture for the past few decades, she argues.

Another solution that Trowbridge touts is thinking small. Gen Z workers are leaning more and more into the gig economy, and one way to gain back trust is to run individual departments as their own small businesses, with a more personalized approach that emphasizes individual career growth.

“[Companies are] going to have to make sure that there’s that mentorship, that coaching going on, that there is that connection [and] team building really happening.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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The White House on Saturday said it will pull the nomination of tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator.

“It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon,” a White House spokesperson told The Hill.

The Senate was slated to vote on his nomination in the coming days.

Isaacman worked alongside tech billionaire Elon Musk at SpaceX to fund the company’s first private spacewalk, and he was one of four astronauts aboard the Polaris Dawn flight this fall. He is also the founder and CEO of Shift4, a payment processing company.

President Trump announced Isaacman as his pick to lead the space administration in December, describing him as “ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era.”

Isaacman testified before the Senate in April as a part of the confirmation process. He advanced out of committee in a 19-9 vote.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed for cloture to vote on Isaacman’s nomination on May 22.

It is not immediately clear why the president pulled his nomination on Saturday. The move was first reported by Traffic lights.

In early April, Isaacman contradicted Musk about space travel priorities. The commercial astronaut told senators he would focus on returning people to the moon, rather than Mars, which has been a priority of Musk’s for some time.

“I’d like nothing more than to see … Americans walking on the moon,” he said during the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing.

This is the latest of a number of nominations Trump has pulled since returning to the White House. He pulled his original nominee for surgeon general earlier this month.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who was nominated to serve as U.N. ambassador, was withdrawn from consideration in April amid tight margins in the GOP-controlled House. Trump eventually tapped Mike Waltz to be the country’s U.N. ambassador after taking him out of the national security advisor role, now filled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

At least one Republican lawmaker has already opposed pulling Isaacman’s nomination.

“Astronaut and successful businessman @RookIsaacman was a strong choice by President Trump to lead NASA. I was proud to introduce Jared at his hearing and strongly oppose efforts to derail his nomination,” first-term Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) wrote in a Saturday post on social media platform X.

Earlier on Saturday, far-right influencer Laura Loomer had reported that “deep state operatives” were attempting to prevent Isaacman from serving at the helm of NASA.

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