An unusually powerful El Niño later this year could exacerbate food security fears as disruption caused by the Iran war strains supply for crucial fertilizer products.

Climate scientists warn it appears increasingly likely that a planet-warming El Niño will take shape over the coming months, with U.S. meteorologists estimating a one-in-three chance of a “strong” weather event forming in October to December.

European climate models indicate an even higher probability of a very strong or “super El Niño,” although the so-called spring barrier means that these forecasts can be inaccurate.

El Niño — or “the little boy” in Spanish — is widely recognized as the warming of the sea surface temperature, which occurs naturally every few years. Such an event is declared when sea temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific rise 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term average.

A super El Niño, which doesn’t have an official scientific category, is understood to refer to an exceptionally strong phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), when sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific rise at least 2 degrees Celsius above normal.

Chris Jaccarini, senior analyst, food and farming at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said 2026 was shaping up to be another year in which conflict and climate risks have become a costly reality.

“Food prices are being squeezed from both sides: by climate extremes disrupting production in major growing regions, and by a food system still hooked on fossil fuels and therefore exposed to spikes in gas, fertiliser, transport and packaging costs,” Jaccarini told CNBC by email.

“That is why the prospect of a strong El Niño matters,” he continued. “It can turbocharge weather risks in a climate already destabilised by human emissions, compounding inflation driven by high fossil fuel prices.”

Some commodities are particularly exposed to the weather event, with El Niño typically putting upward pressure on cocoa, food oils, rice and sugar, Jaccarini said. He also cited broader risks for other products linked to the tropics, such as bananas, tea, coffee, chocolate and soy-fed meat.

Expectations of El Niño’s return follow a multi-year La Niña event, which generally has the effect of lowering global temperatures compared to normal years.

Oil and gas prices and fertilizer costs have skyrocketed due to the Iran war severely disrupting supplies through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Roughly one-third of the world’s seaborne fertilizer trade typically passes through…

Rising grocery prices in the U.S. as the result of the Iran war could be among the most politically damaging outcomes of the conflict just months before a critical U.S. election. 

Two years earlier, President Donald Trump won reelection after hammering the high costs of eggs, bacon and other grocery store staples. Now he and the Republican Party may be faced with even higher food prices as they try to retain control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections.

Democrats are looking to capitalize on the spike by pinning it on Trump’s decision to go to war, while Republicans are choosing their words to downplay economic forecasts of higher prices for the fuel and fertilizer needed to produce and ship the food voters eat.

“Our messaging is affordability and accountability,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in an interview. “It’s a pretty tailored message, pretty narrowly focused, and on both of those pillars, Trump is making our arguments even more compelling.”

“There are a number of ways in which this president is driving up food and energy costs and fueling the affordability crisis,” Huffman said. “On all of these fronts, we would have a chance to rein in the craziness. I really think it sets up in a very compelling way for Democrats in this election.”

The war and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran have rocked the global economy. Oil and gasoline prices have soared, fertilizer costs have spiked and markets have plummeted. 

The next shock could come at the grocery store, a crucial pain point for millions of Americans who have already weathered years of increased food prices. All of this is happening as election season kicks off with primaries and campaign trail messaging. This year’s elections will be viewed as a referendum on Trump, who came into office vowing to lower food costs. 

“It just pisses them off more,” said Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a South Texas Democrat, told CNBC in an interview when asked about how voters will react if food gets more expensive. “When people hear that, they’re like ‘hey, I can’t pay for groceries and you want to go pay for a war in the Middle East?’ I think that’s going to be a tough sell.”

Gonzalez, who already represents a swing seat, saw his district get significantly redder this election cycle after Trump ordered Texas to redraw its congressional district maps to benefit Republicans. The expected price hikes at the grocery store only buttress the affordability narrative that has overcome the midterm contest.

Food faces a number of new inflationary pressures due to the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The increase in oil costs is raising the price of diesel, necessary for farmers and the trucks and railroads that carry food across the country. Fertilizer is also being choked by the closure of the…

The Strait of Hormuz shutdown caused by the war in Iran is jacking up fertilizer prices, hitting farmers in their pocketbooks and threatening to raise food prices.

Now, Democrats trying to win the U.S. midterm elections in November see another new opportunity to pound the affordability crisis and turn the tide after years of losses in the states that produce crops and livestock.

The Strait of Hormuz is a critical channel for fertilizer, including about 50 percent of global nitrogen-rich urea fertilizers, according to the Fertilizer Institute, the industry’s trade association. The Strait has been effectively impassable since President Donald Trump launched the assault, which is now dragging into its third week with no end in sight.

The closure has spiked fertilizer prices just before planting season, potentially scrambling decision-making for farmers across the U.S. And it comes on top of already low commodity prices that have lingered for years and eaten into farmers’ margins.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” Matt Frostic, a Michigan farmer who sits on the board of the National Corn Growers Association, said in an interview with CNBC. “It’s like a code red.”

Frostic said he purchased nitrogen fertilizer, critical for corn crops, in January for around $350 per ton. That same product, he said, is now closing in on $600 per ton.

The murky farm outlook also comes eight months before the midterm elections that could cost Trump control of both the House of Representatives and Senate. Democrats, who are trying to win competitive seats in farm-heavy states like Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, are jumping on the high fertilizer prices as a new example of the affordability issue that continues to haunt Trump and Republicans.

“There are tons of people just like me in our district who are like, I don’t get it. I don’t understand. It was already hard, and now they’re making it harder, and nobody knows why,” said Jake Johnson, a public schoolteacher who is running for Congress in Minnesota’s first district against incumbent Republican Rep. Brad Finstad.

“Our number one job as a campaign and what we want to talk about to every single person we talk to is we need ways to make things cheaper,” Johnson said.

The rural entreaties from Democrats come after years of bleeding support in the country’s rural, agrarian states in the middle of the country. Trump in 2024 won nearly every state in the Midwest, with exceptions in Minnesota and Illinois. He also dominated the county-by-county contest according to the Center for Politics, winning 2,660 counties compared to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 451, which were centered in the most populated parts of the U.S.

“A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” That was how Winston Churchill famously described Russia (the Soviet Union as it then was), back in 1939.

To this day, I can’t think of a better way to describe the complications when trying to decipher Russia, its leadership and its motives. A conundrum reinforced to me yet again this past week during my first conversation with a senior Russian official since the country’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Before Russia’s Crimean invasion and annexation in 2014, I had been a fairly frequent visitor to Russia and had witnessed its post-Soviet integration into the global system.

From G8 meetings in St Petersburg, to G20s in Moscow; from multiple St Petersburg Economic Forum attendances, to sitting in the palatial Kremlin with oil industry chiefs and the powerful Igor Sechin as my host; I had seen how Russia appeared to be on a Western economic trajectory.

And yet all that eroded swiftly after the Crimean invasion, which I witnessed firsthand from Kyiv, where I was reporting from in early 2014.

Spring forward 12 years and all that cooperation was gone. Russia, heavily sanctioned and ostracized by the West, was still at bloody loggerheads with the West in Ukraine and the distrust was as great as at any point in the Cold War that followed World War II.

So, my first conversation with a top Russian official in many years was always going to be a strange moment for me, having had the privilege of speaking to so many top Russian and Ukrainian leaders in my career.

With a high-stakes summit in Beijing less than three weeks away, the U.S. has launched sweeping trade investigations that put China squarely in its crosshairs, adding a new layer of friction to an already complicated relationship.

The probes, which will be conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, aim to identify unfair trade practices, particularly structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors.

While casting a wide net over a dozen trading partners, the move takes a clear aim at China, given its well-documented issues such as overcapacity and forced labor, said Dan Wang, China director at the political consultancy Eurasia Group.

As Trump’s negotiating position has been weakened by the military aggression in Iran, “U.S. needs to establish credible threat on tariffs as it remains Trump’s top pressure tool,” Wang said, although Beijing was likely unsurprised by the escalation.

“Maximizing leverage before major bilateral meetings seems to be a standard move now,” she said.

The probes followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month to strike down Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, which curtailed his ability to deploy tariffs at will, giving China a boost in leverage ahead of the summit.

The Trump administration is “pivoting to its other tools to continue its tariff agenda … [tariff] is clearly a card that Trump wishes to have in his pocket for negotiations,” said Lynn Song, chief economist at ING Bank.

Section 301 permits the president to impose levies on countries found to have engaged in unfair trade practices without congressional approval. Trump has repeatedly charged China with indulging in unfair trade practices going back to his first term as president when he invoked Section 301 as well to levy tariffs.

Meanwhile, despite criticism from global trading partners including the U.S. against its over-reliance on external demand, China’s export machine has continued to run full throttle. Chinese exports surged 21.8% in the first two months from a year earlier, boosting its trade surplus to a record high of $213.6 billion.

The trade probes are now adding fresh uncertainty to an already-complicated diplomatic backdrop and a fragile trade truce between the world’s top two economies, with the gap between both sides’ agendas for the summit widening.

“It is unclear what is even on the table for discussion by both sides, and the summit is coming up quickly,” said Deborah Elms, head…

China‘s opposition to the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran is stoking tensions between Beijing and Washington just weeks before a high-stakes meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

The Middle East offensive, which has killed China-friendly Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a slew of other Iranian officials, shows the U.S. doubling down hard on its willingness to eschew diplomacy and launch high-risk military operations in pursuit of its global goals. The war began less than two months after the U.S. attacked Venezuela to capture the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, who are now both in custody in New York City.

The actions also show that, even as a tumultuous trade war between the U.S. and China has settled into an uneasy detente, the Trump administration is willing to rock the boat in countries where Beijing exerts significant influence.

The attacks aren’t likely to halt or compromise diplomacy between the two superpowers. But they will set the “mood music” for Trump’s upcoming summit with Xi in China, said Tim Keeler, partner and co-head of international trade at Mayer Brown.

The display of speed and force in the Maduro raid was “nothing short of stunning” and served as a reminder to China of U.S. military capabilities, Keeler said in a phone interview.

If the Iran incursion shapes up similarly to Venezuela, “then it could end up being a significant change in the nature of the background music for the meeting,” he said.

That could affect both the talks themselves and any agreements that come out of them, experts say. And while some think the U.S. strikes may give Trump a slight boost with Xi, they also note the advantage could flip to China depending how the days-old war evolves.

Trump is expected to travel to China from March 31 to April 2. Beforehand, top U.S. and Chinese trade officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, are expected to meet in Paris to discuss tariffs and possible deals on U.S. soybeans and Boeing aircraft, Bloomberg reported this week.

The U.S. and Israel started bombarding Iran with air strikes on Saturday, with Trump initially identifying regime change in Tehran as a key goal.

In the days since, the administration’s explanations for both the timing and broader…

New data from the Port of Los Angeles shows that commitments made by China to buy more U.S. agricultural products as part of a trade bargain between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump have yet to materialize, and that has contributed to a decline in cargo volume to near a three-year low for the nation’s busiest port.

Total processed cargo volume at the Port of Los Angeles in January was down by approximately 12% year over year, with Gene Seroka, executive director for the Port of Los Angeles, citing a decline in agricultural exports as among the major factors. “Exports to China look dismal,” he said.

Exports to China have dropped considerably across the country’s major ports, with containerized exports down 26% last year, according to data shared by the Port of Los Angeles. Los Angeles took a big hit on the crucial agricultural export of soybeans, according to Seroka.

In early 2026, President Trump announced China was considering purchasing an additional eight million metric tons of U.S. soybeans (totaling 20 million) for the current season, following the October 2025 agreement to buy 12 million tons.

Soybeans coming out of the Port of Los Angeles to China were down 80% last year, and no improvement was seen in either November or December after the initial discussions between the U.S. and China.

“It’s a really important part of the overall export strategy here,” Seroka said. “Argentina and Brazil have picked up a lot of the contracts for China on soybeans,” he said, and he added that any increase in the U.S. farm sector’s ability to export will take time. “These are not transactional-type applications. These are agreements that the last three, six, and twelve months in duration. So it’ll be yet another cycle before the U.S. soybean exporter has a chance to bid and get into the game,” he added.

The Port of Los Angeles reported roughly 812,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) for the month of January, including imports, exports and empty containers. In January 2025, roughly 924,000 TEUs were reported, fueled by front-loading of freight ahead of not only the major holiday period in Asia but the start of President Trump’s second-term tariffs. Breaking out the container count, January imports were 421,000 container units, down almost 13% from last year’s higher levels. On the export side, 104,000 container units were processed, a close to 8% drop year over year.

Empty export containers that during times of high demand are sent back to Asia, a forwarding looking indicator of Asia demand, came in at 286,000 TEUs, a 12.5% drop from last year, according to the Port of Los Angeles.

Seroka said the elevated 2025 numbers from a period when importers were scrambling to get cargo in ahead of tariffs will continue to be a factor in comparisons throughout much of 2026. “U.S. trade…