Good morning. President Trump’s turn against Russia’s economy is ripping through oil markets.

• Price hit: The price of Russian oil is trading at its biggest discount to Brent since 2023. Ships laden with sanctioned crude are adrift at sea. And big importers, such as China and India, are now seeking to buy crude from elsewhere.
   
• Why? U.S. sanctions announced last month on Russia’s largest oil producers, Lukoil and Rosneft, finally kicked in on Friday. The measures are already starting to reshape global supply lines and test Moscow’s ability to sell crude, the lifeblood of its economy.
   
• Impact: For now, though, the crackdown is reverberating through the global oil trade. The price of Russia’s flagship oil grade is down around 17% since the U.S. sanctions were announced as international demand drops. Meanwhile, the price of Brent crude, the global yardstick, edged up.
   
• What may come: Markets may eventually adjust, as they largely did to earlier wartime restrictions. And a Ukraine peace plan drafted by the Trump administration has raised the prospect of sanctions being lifted.

Former TD Bank employees allege discrimination during Justice Department investigation.

Risk Journal's Max Fillion reports that five former TD Bank employees have filed a lawsuit accusing the bank of violating their civil rights as it faced a Justice Department investigation into its anti-money-laundering compliance practices.

The former employees filed a proposed class suit in a Manhattan federal court alleging they were targeted by the bank’s compliance department for being Chinese or Chinese-American because of a Justice Department investigation into networks of Chinese money-brokers using the bank to help Mexican cartels launder criminal proceeds. A spokesperson for TD Bank said the bank doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

SEC drops landmark cyber case against SolarWinds.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dismissed its case against SolarWinds on Thursday, ending a yearslong legal battle that had unnerved the cybersecurity industry.

What was the case about? The agency sued SolarWinds in 2023 after the software company disclosed a major cyberattack in 2020 that affected thousands of customers and dozens of federal agencies. The watchdog alleged that the company made false and misleading statements about its cyber risks before the hack and in its investor disclosures afterward. It was the first time securities regulators went to court with civil-fraud claims against a public company that suffered a cyberattack.

• U.S. authorities charged two Americans and two Chinese citizens with conspiring to illegally export Nvidia’s A100 chips to China through Malaysia and Thailand, Risk Journal reports.
   
• Australia’s government said it would block a $387.2 million takeover of Mayne Pharma by U.S. company Cosette Pharmaceuticals on national security grounds, citing a need to protect critical medical supply chains.
   
• Luxury cars from the European Union are delivered to clients in Russia through sham buyers in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan or Turkey, German and Swedish authorities said.
   
• The European Union plans to intensify its campaign to shutdown Russia’s shadow fleet by boarding and searching ships suspected of transporting Russian oil in violation of EU sanctions.
   
• Fugees rapper Pras Michel was sentenced to 14 years in prison Thursday for conspiring to influence the Obama and Trump presidencies in a multimillion-dollar foreign-influence scheme.
   
• The Internal Revenue Service signaled that it is relaxing enforcement of the new “no tax on tips” law, allowing more workers to potentially take advantage of the break.
   
• The Internal Revenue Service acted unlawfully when it turned over tens of thousands of taxpayers’ addresses to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal judge found Friday, in a ruling that also limited immigration authorities’ ability to use the information.

Join us on Dec. 2 for a webinar examining how bank compliance should incorporate the national security priorities of the Trump administration. Speakers are Alessio Evangelista, partner at Skadden Arps and a former enforcement director at FinCEN; and David Schwartz, president and chief executive of the Financial & International Business Association. You can register here.

Dragonfly's annual geopolitical assessment explores the key trends and risks businesses should expect to face in 2026. To attend the Nov. 27 event at the News Building in London, click here.

Russia stuck to its demands on Ukraine. Many are now in Trump’s peace plan.

For the past four years, Russia has stuck by a single set of demands for ending its war in Ukraine. Now, Moscow is sitting back and reaping the fruits of its strategy, as President Trump presses a peace plan that broadly conforms with its demands.

What it says. The latest 28-point document that Trump has championed as a path to ending the war includes some of Russia’s most important conditions. Those terms include giving Russia more land in Ukraine’s east, defanging Ukraine’s military and closing off the path for Kyiv to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Trump said Saturday that he might be open to changes to the plan following criticism from Europe and Kyiv.

• White House Hails Progress in Talks With Ukraine to End War With Russia
• For a Weakened Zelensky, Yielding to Trump Is Riskier Than Defiance
• Trump’s Peace Plan for Ukraine, Annotated

The middle class is buckling under almost five years of persistent inflation.

America’s middle class is weary.

After nearly five years of high prices, many middle-class earners thought life would be more affordable by now. Costs for goods and services are 25% above where they were in 2020. Even though the inflation rate is below its recent 2022 high, certain essentials like coffee, ground beef and car repairs are up markedly this year.

• U.S. Business Activity Accelerates as Government Shutdown Ends

• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman emerged from a White House visit this week as, in President Trump’s view, the undisputed leader of the Arab world.
   
• The U.S. is pushing ahead with plans to build communities for Palestinians on the Israeli side of the line dividing Gaza, bringing in teams of engineers and starting to clear sites in hopes of pulling civilians away from areas controlled by Hamas.
   
• Executives are starting to chill out about tariffs after a year of anxiety.
   
• Japan’s cabinet has approved $135 billion of stimulus to help households cope with rising living costs and boost economic growth, firing off the first fiscal salvo under new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
   
• The Israeli military said it killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike on Beirut, as it pushes to keep the battered militant group from rebuilding following a cease-fire the two sides reached last year.
   
• Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defied Washington’s attempts to use tariffs to save Jair Bolsonaro, Trump’s right-wing ally, from jail—and the U.S. relented on tariffs. 
   
• South America’s political landscape is shifting rightward, with conservative leaders gaining power because of public frustration over crime, immigration and the economy.

• Advanced Micro Devices Chief Executive Lisa Su has a new chip and a new goal: to grab a big chunk of an AI business that could reach $1 trillion a year.
   
• The failure of Peak Rare Earths, an Australian mining company, to build a China-free supply of rare-earth minerals offers a look at how Beijing came to dominate the global supply of critical minerals—a position it is now deftly leveraging for geopolitical gain.
   
• Holding a climate summit in the tropics would seem to be a good idea. Scientists say the world’s hot zones are bearing the brunt of a warming climate. What the organizers of this month’s conference didn’t account for was, well, the rain.
   
• The former Treasury secretary and Harvard president’s enormous network and clout kept him immune from past Jeffrey Epstein revelations. But this time was just too much for Larry Summers.