A rejected Hormuz deal, another Russian refinery offline, and five geopolitical signals for September 27, 2026

US-China: The summit closes with $30bn of tariff cuts and an AI channel

• The White House said the two countries agreed to cut tariffs on $30 billion of goods in each direction: US exports including agricultural goods, wood and cosmetics, and US imports including small appliances, toys and decorations. China's Foreign Ministry said the two sides would set up a trade council and extend the outcomes of earlier talks in Kuala Lumpur. The tariff agreement follows the two-month extension of the trade truce, to January 10, that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced after meeting Vice Premier He Lifeng 1.
• On artificial intelligence, both governments said the two sides would hold a dialogue on the technology's risks and benefits, with the next round set for November, and open a communication channel for AI-related incidents. The White House said the leaders agreed to use the term "super intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence", and the Chinese ministry said Beijing valued the new term. Trump said separately that he would meet Xi again in November in China and in December at the G20 in Florida, and called the Washington visit a success 12.
• Trump told Xi during the visit that direct or indirect Chinese support for Iran was "totally unacceptable", and Beijing assured Washington on Thursday that it would keep out, the US ambassador to China, David Perdue, said. Perdue told Fox News that Washington had "seen movement ... on that already". Reuters reported in July that Iran expected within weeks a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defence missile launchers, and Chinese officials have assured Tehran that China will maintain its economic, political and military ties under American pressure 3.

Russia-Ukraine: A US-proposed three-way meeting in the UAE, and two more refineries offline

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the United States had proposed a meeting with Ukraine and Russia in a three-way format at technical level, and suggested the United Arab Emirates as the location; Ukraine is waiting for a US proposal on the date. Zelensky said Ukrainian negotiators had met their American counterparts after his talks with Trump in New York, and that the sides would "return in 10 days with either a new perspective or a result". The Kremlin said a trilateral meeting could happen soon 5.
• President Vladimir Putin said all proposals for a settlement remained on the table and that Moscow still needed to assess what served its interests. He said Russia had been ready to resume negotiations after last week's parliamentary elections, and that Ukrainian attacks on Moscow and on polling stations now required a sustained response; he added that Ukraine's calls for talks followed its difficulty countering jet-powered drones. At the United Nations, Sergei Lavrov and Germany's Johann Wadephul held the first Russian-German foreign ministers' talks since 2022 67.
• Ukraine's General Staff said its forces struck the Ilsky oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai overnight on September 26, and the Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point said the strike damaged three primary oil-processing units and a tank farm and halted operations at a plant that processes about 6.6 million tons of fuel a year and ranks among the largest in southern Russia. Krasnodar's governor, Veniamin Kondratiev, said drones attacked the Seversky district, where the refinery sits, and reported fatalities and one serious injury. Russia's Novoshakhtinsk refinery suspended operations after a drone attack the same weekend; Rostov region governor Yuri Slyusar said air defences destroyed about 50 drones overnight, and the plant has capacity of 5 million metric tons a year, around 100,000 barrels a day, selling fuel mainly for export 89.

Middle East: Trump rejects Iran's seven-day Hormuz plan and keeps the blockade

• The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed US officials, that Trump rejected Iran's proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and told aides he expects to resume bombing after the November midterm elections. Iran's proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and started nuclear talks in return for the US lifting its naval blockade of Iranian ports, unfreezing some Iranian assets and waiving sanctions on Iranian oil exports. US officials said Washington plans to keep the maritime embargo in place and is betting that economic pressure will push Tehran into an agreement on American terms, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has told mediators it is prepared for a long war and wants a return to the terms of the June preliminary deal 11.
• Trump said at the White House on Saturday: "I reject their proposal. ... I rejected their deal." He said Iran wanted to open the strait immediately "because they're losing so badly", and that the naval blockade was putting increasing economic pressure on the country 121314.
• Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Sunday that only a negotiated solution can end the deadlock, that Iran's conditions are unchanged, and that Tehran is waiting for the mediators to convey the American position officially before it decides. President Masoud Pezeshkian told CBS that Iran is ready to implement the June memorandum of understanding in stages and that the distrust the war created has to be overcome first. Oman's foreign minister, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, called on all parties to keep dialogue open 1516.

Middle East shipping: Crude keeps moving through Hormuz as the Gulf of Oman queue fills

• Kpler data showed 33.7 million barrels of crude left the Strait of Hormuz in the week from September 20, carried by 19 tankers, 17 of them very large crude carriers of 2 million barrels each, mostly loaded with Saudi crude and then Iraqi barrels; the full previous week moved 49.2 million barrels. A US official counted about 60 commercial vessels of all types transiting on Wednesday, the highest daily crude volume since early July, and Kpler put Thursday's commodity vessel count at nine, down from 14 the day before. Before the war began on February 28, about 125 large commercial vessels a day used the strait, carrying some 20% of world oil and liquefied natural gas supply 19.
• Ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman have reached their limits after Saudi Arabia diverted exports away from the Red Sea. Saudi Aramco has sold more than 60 million barrels for transfer off Sohar, Oman, this month and next since the September 13 attack on its East-West Pipeline halted loadings at Yanbu. Kpler expects Saudi crude exports through Hormuz to rebound to 3.6 million barrels a day in September from about 900,000 bpd in August, and its analyst Panagiotis Krontiras said that increase alone requires 36 to 40 more very large crude carriers. The daily time-charter rate for a VLCC carrying Middle East oil to China reached a record $1.27 million on Monday, and Vortexa's Emma Li said an STS operation now takes nearly 10 days, against five to seven earlier 20.
• The Saudi-led coalition said early on Saturday it intercepted two ballistic missiles and two drones the Houthis launched at the kingdom, the missiles toward Khamis Mushait and the drones toward Riyadh, while Saudi civil defence issued alerts for Khamis Mushait and Abha. Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish military chiefs met in Riyadh on Friday to review threats to the kingdom under the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, and Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti called on soldiers to be ready to fight until the Houthis are removed from power 2122.

Taiwan: Taipei presses for the $14bn package as PLA sorties fall to two

• Taiwan's deputy foreign minister, Chen Ming-chi, said on Sunday that the United States "very much" understands Taiwan's defence needs and the severity of the military threat it faces, and that Taipei has received repeated confirmation that American policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged. Taiwan has waited months for Trump to approve a package worth about $14 billion, following the record $11 billion sale approved last December. Trump's only public comment since the summit was that Xi understands his position on Taiwan 23.
• Speaking on Saturday, deputy foreign minister Francois Wu said selling Taiwan the weapons to defend itself, and allowing its semiconductor industry to keep contributing to the world, serves US national interests. David Perdue, the American ambassador to China, said Taiwan policy has stayed as it was, including the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act that requires the United States to supply Taiwan with the means to defend itself. China's People's Daily repeated that Taiwan is "the core of China's core interests and the first unbreakable red line in China-US relations" 24.
• Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense counted 2 PLA aircraft sorties, 5 PLA Navy ships and 6 official Chinese ships around the island in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. on September 27 (UTC+8). The window to 6 a.m. on September 26 recorded 5 aircraft sorties, one of them crossing the median line into northern airspace, with 6 PLAN ships and 5 official Chinese ships. Both windows sit well below the 10 sorties a day the ministry reported for September 23 and 24 2526.