Evening digest: energy stocks surge, Nvidia faces CES showdown, Trump rattles India with tariff threats
Markets lurched across energy, tech, and geopolitics as Washington injected fresh volatility into global trade and supply chains.
Trump’s vow to reopen Venezuela’s oil fields sent US refiners and Chevron surging, while tariff threats against India rattled emerging-market confidence.
In tech, Nvidia faces a defining moment at CES amid rising custom-chip competition, as Samsung deepens its all-in bet on Google’s Gemini.
Power, policy, and platforms collided in a high-stakes start to the week.
Chevron, US refiners soar as Trump promises Venezuela oil access
Energy stocks exploded higher Monday as President Trump pledged unfettered American access to Venezuela’s oil fields following Nicolás Maduro’s capture.
Chevron, the lone US major still operating in Venezuela, jumped 7.3%, while refiners Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, Phillips 66, and PBF Energy surged 5-16%.
Trump declared on Air Force One that US oil companies would “spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure,” implying sanctions relief was coming.
The math is compelling: Venezuelan heavy crude aligns perfectly with Gulf Coast refinery configurations, and diesel shortages from Russian and Venezuelan sanctions have created acute demand.
However, analysts cautioned that actual production revival requires massive investment and faces political uncertainty. Venezuela pumped just 1.1 million barrels daily last year versus its historical 3.5 million peak.
Nvidia CEO Huang faces rivals at CES as competition intensifies
Jensen Huang takes the stage at CES Las Vegas on Monday, the tech world’s biggest showcase, as Nvidia’s AI fortress faces its fiercest assault yet from hyperscalers building custom silicon.
Google and Meta are hemorrhaging vast sums into proprietary chips to chip away at Nvidia’s 80%+ data center dominance, with Alphabet’s TPUs and Meta’s Trainium competing on cost and performance per watt.
AMD’s Lisa Su, presenting Monday evening, is positioning her MI300 series as a viable alternative, though still light-years behind Blackwell in real-world deployments.
To complicate matters, Nvidia just acquired Groq’s engineering talent and technology last month, itself a Google spin-off that built blazingly fast inference chips.
The irony stings: Huang must prove Nvidia’s next-generation accelerators beyond Blackwell outpace customer-built silicon, without alienating hyperscalers who are simultaneously funding competitors.
Samsung doubles down on Google Gemini
Samsung’s new co-CEO T.M. Roh declared Monday that the company will double its Gemini-powered devices to 800 million units this year, expanding from 400 million in 2025.
The aggressive push reflects Samsung’s desperation to reclaim the smartphone crown from Apple while fending off Chinese rivals across phones, TVs, and smart home products.
“We will apply AI to all products, all functions, and all services as quickly as possible,” Roh told Reuters in his first interview since November.
The strategy massively benefits Google, which locked in Alphabet’s latest Gemini 3 model against OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 in a fierce developer war.
Consumer awareness of Galaxy AI jumped from 30% to 80% in just one year, validating Samsung’s ecosystem bet.
Trump escalates tariff threats on India
US President Trump ratcheted up pressure on India Monday, warning of “very quick” tariff hikes if New Delhi doesn’t halt its Russian oil imports, claiming PM Narendra Modi personally assured him the cuts were coming.
Speaking aboard Air Force One, Trump said Modi “knew I was not happy” and wanted to “make me happy,” framing energy trade as a quid pro quo for tariff relief.
India’s IT stocks plummeted 2.5% on the threat, with exports already hit by a 50% US tariff split evenly between retaliation for Russian oil and other trade demands.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham backed legislation imposing 500% tariffs on Russian oil importers unless Moscow agrees to ceasefire terms.
Yet India refuses capitulation: despite heavy sanctions on Russian suppliers Rosneft and Lukoil, refiners continue buying from non-sanctioned entities, keeping imports at 1.6 million barrels daily.
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