Top stories for the morning: Google may lose Chrome, oil gets more expensive, who benefited from duties

An antitrust case against Google could lead to a forced sale of its Chrome browser, potentially crashing Alphabet shares by 25% and hitting profits. Oil quotes continue to rise due to risks of supply disruptions. And in the steel industry, U.S. stocks soared after Donald Trump promised to double tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and announced a deal between U.S. Steel and Japan's Nippon Steel. On these and other topics, here's a roundup of key events for the morning of June 3.

Alphabet shares could fall 15-25% if U.S. federal judge Amit Mehta decides to order the company to sell its Chrome browser, Barclays analysts said in a note to investors, reported by Yahoo Finance.

In August 2024, Google lost a landmark antitrust trial against the U.S. Department of Justice. The judge found the company guilty of monopolizing the search engine market - specifically, the markets for «general search» and «in-text ads» that appear at the top of the results page. Last Friday, the DOJ urged the court to order Google to sell Chrome, share search query data with competitors, and ban exclusivity agreements that ensure Google's status as the default search engine on mobile devices and browsers.

Barclays analyst Ross Sandler wrote on Monday that «the likelihood of a Chrome sale, while still low, has increased.» He added that the «most likely buyers» could be «well-funded AI companies like OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT), Anthropic or possibly Perplexity.»

Sandler believes that such an outcome would be a «major blow» to Google, given that Chrome has 4 billion users and generates about 35% of its search revenue.

«This would be a massive event - a sort of black swan for GOOGL stock,» the analyst said. - The stock would certainly fall sharply if this decision is made, as no investor we talk to is modeling such a scenario.» The sale of Chrome could translate into a 30% drop in Alphabet's earnings per share, he said.

The judge is expected to rule on the measures in August, which is when the fate of Google's search empire will be known. On Saturday, the company said it would challenge the ruling in an appeal.

Alphabet's Class A shares fell 1.6% on Monday and have lost 10.7% since the beginning of the year.

Oil prices rose in early Asian trading on Tuesday amid concerns over a U.S. proposal for a nuclear deal with Iran that could be rejected by Tehran, as well as lower production in Canada due to wildfires, reports Reuters.

Brent crude futures were up 55 cents, or 0.85%, to $65.18 a barrel by 00:00 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 59 cents, or 0.94%, to $63.11 a barrel after rising about 1% earlier in the session.

Both grades rose nearly 3% on Monday, June 2, after OPEC+ kept its July production increase rate at 411,000 bpd - less than some market participants had feared and the same as the previous two months.

On Tuesday, prices were supported by geopolitical tensions. Iran is set to reject a U.S. proposal to settle the long-running nuclear dispute because it «does not take into account Tehran's interests» and does not soften Washington's stance on uranium enrichment, Reuters wrote. If the nuclear deal talks fail, it could mean continued sanctions against Iran, which would limit supplies and keep oil prices rising.

An additional risk factor remains the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, raising concerns about supply stability and higher premiums.

In addition, forest fires in the Canadian province of Alberta forced a temporary suspension of production at some oil and gas facilities, which may also lead to a reduction in supplies. According to Reuters calculations, the fires affected production of about 344,000 bpd in the oil sands, which is about 7% of the country's total oil production.

The surge in oil prices on Monday mainly reflected relief that OPEC+ did not go for a bigger production increase than earlier. «When the gloomiest fears failed to materialize, investors started to close short positions opened ahead of the weekend meeting,» ANZ senior commodity strategist Daniel Hines wrote.

Major U.S. steelmakers rose sharply on Monday, June 2, after Donald Trump announced he would raise duties on steel imports, reports CNBC.

Shares of mining company Cleveland-Cliffs rose about 23%, while Steel Dynamics and Nucor each added 10%. The VanEck Steel ETF (SLX) exchange-traded fund tracking the sector was up more than 3%.

At a rally in Pennsylvania on Friday, Trump said duties on U.S. steel imports would be increased from 25 percent to 50 percent. This has reignited global trade tensions and sparked criticism from international partners.

«We are going to increase the tariff by 25 percentage points - from 25 percent to 50 percent - on steel imported into the United States. This will further strengthen the U.S. steel industry,» Trump said.

In response, the EU said Trump's actions «undermine ongoing efforts to reach a negotiated solution» and that the EU was «ready to impose retaliatory measures.»

In addition, Trump announced a «grand agreement» between U.S. Steel and Japanese giant Nippon Steel. He promised that U.S. Steel would remain «under U.S. control» and there would be no layoffs. Earlier, he refrained from using the phrase «merger» and called the deal a «partnership» that he said would create at least 70,000 jobs in the U.S. economy.

Latvian technology company Aerones, whose clients include General Electric and Enel, has raised $62 million for a global launch of robots and other artificial intelligence-based solutions to maintain and protect thousands of wind turbines in more than 30 countries, its co-founder and CEO Dainis Kruse told Reuters.

Wind power provides almost 10% of the world's electricity production, and the sector is growing rapidly. However, most turbines are still maintained manually, resulting in long shutdowns and significant losses for power companies and operators.

Aerones robots can maintain giant turbine blades at least twice as fast as humans can, offering a more efficient, safer and cost-effective solution, Kruse said.

«The industry is scaling very quickly and maintenance remains difficult. It costs more to idle turbines than the work itself to repair them - it becomes a bottleneck, driving up the cost of renewable energy,» he said. - We don't wait for the blade to fall, we prevent it in advance.»

The funding round was led by US investors Activate Capital and S2G Investments. Aerones is also backed by a €4 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund. It has raised a further €30 million in 2023.

According to Kruse, the company is actively developing in the US, where it opened an office in Dallas last year and hires local specialists. So it was important to attract U.S. partners. Aerones also plans to return to the market at the end of the year to raise another $15-20 million in venture debt.

Since 2020, Aerones solutions have helped generate nearly 400,000 MWh of additional clean electricity and avoided 165,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, the company said in a statement.

Markets in the Asia-Pacific region rallied Tuesday following gains in all three major Wall Street indexes the day before - despite escalating global trade tensions, reports CNBC. At issue are China's accusations against the U.S. of violating an interim trade agreement and the European Union's criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump's intention to double steel duties to 50%.

- Japan's Nikkei 225 index added 0.36 percent at the open but then slowed to about 0.1 percent, while the broader Topix index was down 0.1 percent.

- In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 index climbed 0.6 percent. Economists polled by Reuters estimated the country's seasonally adjusted current account balance for the first quarter of 2025 will be a deficit of 13.1 billion Australian dollars ($8.51 billion), up from a deficit of 12.5 billion in the previous quarter.

- Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was up about 1.3 percent.

- South Korea's markets were closed due to the election.

- U.S. futures on the three major U.S. indices were down about 0.3% - after a positive start to June trading on Wall Street. The S&P 500 index rose 0.41% the previous day to close at 5,935.94, the Nasdaq Composite added 0.67% to 19,242.61 and the Dow Jones index rose 35.41 points, or 0.08%, to 42,305.48.