If you are a fan of falling prices, this is a great time to be following the global oil market. The Brent crude benchmark dropped again on Thursday amid the possibility that Opec+ will announce another big production hike for July in a week’s time. Bloomberg had reported that the cartel is considering boosting output by 411,000 barrels per day in July. That would bring it even closer to unwinding all of its 2.2 million barrels per day in production cuts it announced in March for April.

This also follows some more bearish indicators for oil on the demand side. Last week, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) said that the country’s crude oil stocks rose over the course of last week by 1.3 million barrels. Petrol stocks also rose, in this instance by 816,000 barrels. This was despite an expectation that there would be draws on both stores, rather than inventories rising. It remains to be seen how both of these will pan out over the coming months, as summer driving season begins in the US.

The market reaction to the Opec+ news is interesting, insofar as there is still any reaction at all. These large production increases are becoming an established pattern and one would expect the market to price that in. A July production increase of 411,000 barrels per day would follow a couple of other increases of the same volume. But despite the fact that this isn’t particularly surprising, Brent crude still fell by 1.9% on the week to Friday.

Clearly, there isn’t really a unified view of why Opec+ is behaving like this. One possibility is that the cartel is prioritising market share, which is Opec+’s own line. Another is that it is trying to punish countries that overproduce compared to their allocated production limits. It could also be an attempt to curry favour with Donald Trump, who is keen on lower oil prices.

The logical explanation likely has something to do with the US President. Opec+ announced its first big production hike in April, for May. That closely follows Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, which took effect on 2 April. Opec+ has had a problem with market share, namely losing it to US shale oil drillers while it pursued its production cuts. But that isn’t exactly a new issue for the cartel, nor is the problem of some countries overproducing against their quotas. What is new is the world’s biggest economy embracing protectionism.

This is an edited version of an article originally published in the Eurointelligence newsletter.