Russia Vows To 'Fill China's Energy Resource Gap' Amid Hormuz Crisis In Lavrov-Xi Meeting

At a moment it remains a serious open question over just how vulnerable China is to the Hormuz Strait crisis, and now with the US-imposed US naval blockade of the vital oil transit waterway, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is in Beijing pledging energy support to China. 

Lavrov met with President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, during which Xi urged China and Russia to "give full play to the advantages of geographic proximity and complementarity, deepen all-round cooperation and raise the resilience of each other's development."

Russia remains China's top energy supplier. "Both sides should maintain strategic focus, trust each other, support each other, develop together," Xi continued, according to a Chinese state media readout.

via Russian Foreign Ministry

Lavrov in turn told Xi that Chinese-Russian relations play a "stabilizing role in world affairs" at a time of global "chaos and turmoil." This has been a consistent theme on which relations and trust have been built between Beijing and Moscow going back to the start of the Ukraine war over four years ago.

Importantly, after the meeting the Russian foreign minister announced to a press conference that Moscow stands ready to increase energy supplies to China.

"Russia can certainly fill the resource gap that has arisen in China and other countries interested in working with us on an equal and mutually beneficial basis," Lavrov stated.

The two-day Lavrov visit is toward laying the groundwork for an upcoming summit between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It's expected for the first half of this year, but likely after Trump's upcoming May 14-15 summit with the Chinese leader.

The Hormuz crisis is a threat to Chinese energy given Asia's largest power still depends heavily on global supply routes it does not fully control. While Beijing has for many years sought to diversify through pipelines from Russia and Central Asia, the reality is that those projects take years to build and remain far too limited to replace the volume of oil moving through Hormuz.

However, there's a strong counterargument pushing back against the assumption that Trump's Iran moves will ultimately squeeze and devastate China. Alongside Russia coming to Beijing's side with its recently unsanctioned oil, there are also these aspects to consider:

While China is to some extent dependent on Gulf oil, so is the rest of Asia. While the United States might be insulated from some of the worst consequences of the Hormuz closure, the economies of our Asian allies are not. Asian economies are among the most dependent on Middle Eastern oil, with South Korea receiving around 70 percent and Japan receiving a whopping 95 percent of their oil from the Middle East. The Council on Foreign Relations notes that in 2024, 84 percent of the oil and 83 percent of LNG shipped through Hormuz were bound for Asia. That is not a targeted squeeze. Instead, such a move looks to be made without much heed to Asia at all, hitting the very states Washington is supposedly positioning against Beijing.

China is actually one of the best-positioned countries in Asia to handle this exact crisis because of existing stockpiles, diversified supply chains, a coal-dependent electric grid, and pipeline alternatives. While China is vulnerable, it is more insulated than most of Asia, only receiving around 20 percent of its oil from Hormuz.

There's a certain irony in the fact that an early element of blowback from the Iran war was that Washington scrambled to remove sanctions on Russian crude oil transiting the high seas, to bat down soaring global oil prices, and yet it is this very unsanctioned oil flow which will benefit China.

And the 'unintended consequences' continue to trickle over. The American Conservative writes, "This damage to our Pacific allies is not theoretical. Across Asia, partner governments are already scrambling as their economies face the worst crisis in decades. Asian nations are shortening workweeks and implementing fuel controls, disrupting their economies as tension mounts. Many Asian economies have turned to Russia amid this turmoil, bolstering the economy of another supposed U.S. enemy."

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/15/2026 - 15:40
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Russia Vows To 'Fill China's Energy Resource Gap' Amid Hormuz Crisis In Lavrov-Xi Meeting

Federal Judge Temporarily Allows Pentagon To Enforce Press Restrictions

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal court on April 13 temporarily allowed the Trump administration to enforce its media access restrictions at the Pentagon after blocking the policy last month.

The Department of War logo at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on March 10, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the federal government’s request for a 14-day administrative stay of his March 20 order blocking the restrictions.

Friedman did not provide reasons for his decision, which stops his own prior ruling blocking the policy from going into effect for now.

The government had asked for the 14-day stay to allow the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to consider the Department of War’s appeal of the March 20 decision. In that ruling, Friedman issued a permanent injunction preventing the department from enforcing the challenged restrictions.

The Department of War tightened its rules for the media in September 2025 after officials said reporters were roaming the halls of the Pentagon, jeopardizing national security.

The new rules stated that soliciting non-public information from department personnel or encouraging employees to break the law “falls outside the scope of protected newsgathering activities.” They also stated that reporters would be denied press passes if officials determined they posed a safety or security risk.

The New York Times, which filed a lawsuit late last year to block the policy, previously claimed restricting journalists’ access to the Pentagon building and its employees was unconstitutional.

The media outlet said the policy ran afoul of the First Amendment by limiting “journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done—ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.”

In his March 20 ruling, Friedman wrote that the drafters of the First Amendment “believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech.”

“That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years,“ he said. “It must not be abandoned now.”

“We’ve been through, in my lifetime ... the Vietnam War, where the public, I think it’s fair to say, was lied to about a lot of things,” the judge said. “We’ve been through 9/11. We’ve been through the Kuwait situation, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay.”

The judge also said at the time that the department could not show that it would be harmed by the cancellation of the policy, whose “true purpose and practical effect” was “to weed out disfavored journalists—those who were not, in the Department’s view, ‘on board and willing to serve,’—and replace them with news entities that are.”

The Department of War’s initial policy required media outlets to sign agreements vowing not to solicit unauthorized information from Pentagon officials at the risk of losing their press credentials.

After Friedman issued his ruling on March 20, the Pentagon instituted a new policy restoring credentials for some reporters while requiring that any journalists who enter the building be accompanied by an escort. It also, among other things, changed the prior policy’s language restricting the solicitation of unauthorized or non-public information. Instead, it prohibited the “encouraging, inducing, or requesting” disclosure of such information.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell reacted to Friedman’s new stay order.

Parnell said in a post on X that the department will seek an emergency stay of the initial injunction “to preserve the security of the Pentagon during the pendency of the appeal.”

“Journalists do not have unescorted access to the building but will continue to have press credentials and access to all press briefings, press conferences, and interviews,” he said.

New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander told The Epoch Times that the media organization will be opposing the department’s motion for a stay from the D.C. circuit court.

Jacob Burg contributed to this report.

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Federal Judge Temporarily Allows Pentagon To Enforce Press Restrictions

Fed Chair Nominee Kevin Warsh Reveals Assets Worth Over $190 Million

Trump's nominee for next Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, disclosed assets with his wife, heiress Jane Lauder, that total at least $192 million, though - according to Bloomberg - "the actual figure for their holdings is certainly much higher", underscoring the extent of his close ties to Wall Street through personal investments and advisory positions. Warsh, who was chosen in January by President Donald Trump to succeed Jay Powell, received more than $13 million in consulting fees last year, including $10.2 million from billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller’s family office, Duquesne.

The figures are part of financial disclosures submitted by Warsh ahead of his confirmation hearing for Fed Chair that is scheduled for next week. They underscore that Warsh, who previously served on the US central bank’s Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011, will be among the wealthiest to hold the Fed chair position.

His 69-page filing, published by the Office of Government Ethics on Tuesday, also reveals hundreds of millions of dollars in assets held by himself and his wife, Estée Lauder heir Jane Lauder.

Warsh has more than $100 million invested in multiple funds run by Duquesne, including $50 million in a fund called Juggernaut. Its underlying assets were not disclosed because of a confidentiality agreement.

The Fed chair nominee’s disclosures reveal a constellation of advisory work for financial institutions, including the hedge fund GoldenTree Asset Management, for which he received $1.6mn, and private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, for which he received $750,000.

Warsh received more than $1.5 million for what the disclosures refer to as honoraria, primarily for speaking engagements, including $750,000 from hedge fund Brevan Howard for three different occasions.

He also has assets tied to dozens of start-up companies, especially ones related to AI, and several with a focus on crypto. About 60 holdings could not be disclosed because of confidentiality agreements but will be divested if he is confirmed as Fed chair, according to the disclosure.

In his ethics agreement submitted with the disclosures, Warsh has promised to divest from certain holdings and to resign from board positions and other roles, including as a director at United Parcel Service. Warsh is married to Lauder, the daughter of prominent Republican donor Ronald Lauder - the son of makeup scion Estee Lauder.

As Bloomberg notes, while nominees disclose the value of their assets in broad ranges, with the higher end peaking at $50 million, their spouses use different ranges, topping out at those listed as over $1 million. Two of Warsh’s assets - titled the Juggernaut Fund - each were valued at more than $50 million, while his wife listed more than 30 assets in the $1 million plus category, including her shares in Estee Lauder Cos.

Other public data on Jane Lauder’s holdings illustrate how vague the government disclosures can be. Lauder currently holds $1.5 billion in Estee Lauder stock directly and through two family trusts, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. She’s also collected more than $450 million in lifetime dividends on those holdings and has sold more than $83 million in stock since 2003, according to the index.
Warsh pledged in his paperwork to recuse himself from policy decisions that might affect Estee Lauder. 

“I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that to my knowledge has a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of the Estee Lauder Companies unless I first obtain a written waiver,” Warsh wrote.

The extent of Warsh’s wealth - which is substantially bigger than current Fed Chair Jerome Powell whose assets were estimated at more than $100 million when he was nominated for his first term in 2017, and who worked for the private equity firm Carlyle before joining the Fed, and which would easily make him the richest Fed chair in history - is expected to attract scrutiny from Democratic members of the Senate banking committee.Trump’s second administration has multiple independently wealthy members, including the president himself, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who previously worked as a hedge fund manager, and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, the former chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald. 

Warsh is required to list his and his close family members’ investments as part of congressional rules that mean all appointees for Senate-confirmed roles must publish financial disclosures ahead of confirmation hearings.

Warsh will face the banking committee for his nomination hearing next week, chair Tim Scott, Republican senator for South Carolina, said on Fox Business on Tuesday. A vote on the Senate floor, where he needs a majority of 51, is expected to be delayed as senators insist the Department of Justice drop a criminal investigation into Powell.

As the FT notes, several of Congress’s 53 Republican senators, led by North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, have expressed concerns about an investigation they believe represents an attempt by Trump to rein in the Fed’s capacity to set interest rates free from political pressure.

Powell’s second term as Fed chair officially ends in mid-May, but the Fed chair could stay on past that date should Warsh’s nomination fail to reach the Senate floor before then due to the probe. 

Since stepping down as Fed governor in 2011, Warsh has worked as a partner at the family office of Druckenmiller, the famed macro investor who has kept a low profile since converting his hedge fund into a family office.

Warsh said in a letter that accompanied the release of his disclosure that he would divest any interest in Duquesne and related outfits between his confirmation and assuming the duties of Fed chair. Heather Jones, an OGE official, said Warsh would be in compliance with government rules once he divests the assets specified in the letter.

Warsh would also resign from many of his other positions and divest his interests in other firms before taking the helm of the world’s most important central bank. While he would also resign from his advisory company Vicarage Stable, he said he would “continue to have a financial interest in this entity” and receive passive investment income from it.

The Fed also has its own rules on what investments officials are allowed to hold, with interests in financial institutions limited. Fed officials are also banned from holding certain financial instruments. Its regulations stipulate that officials cannot buy or sell assets around monetary policy meetings.

Warsh was independently wealthy before joining the Fed as its youngest-ever governor in 2006. He worked at Morgan Stanley from 1995 to 2002, rising to Executive Director of Mergers and Acquisitions, followed by a role as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush for Economic Policy and Executive Secretary of the National Economic Council

Since leaving the Fed, he has also worked for Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, an organisation renowned for hawkish views on monetary policy. Hoover paid Warsh a salary of $150,000 last year — a figure dwarfed by consulting fees and honoraria from dozens of financial firms. 

His full filing is below (pdf link)

Kevin Warsh Federal Reserve Financial Discloure 2026 by Zerohedge

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/14/2026 - 15:45
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Fed Chair Nominee Kevin Warsh Reveals Assets Worth Over $190 Million

'Door Is Not Closed': Mediators Still Press For Iran Deal After US Demanded 20-Year Halt To Nuclear Program

There's currently some consensus among international reports that the weekend US-Iran peace talks in Pakistan fundamentally broke down over the nuclear issue. The question of Iran's enriched uranium has at times over the course of the war taken a front seat and at other times a back seat when it comes to Washington's evolving justifications and war aims in launching Operation Epic Fury.

On Monday a US official has been cited in Axios as saying Iran must halt its nuclear enrichment program for 20 years to end the war, scaling back from an earlier White House demand for a permanent end to enrichment. And that's when sources say the Iranians countered with a shorter "single digit" period.

via Al Jazeera

The unnamed sources explained that during talks in Islamabad the Iranian mediators countered with a proposal to halt enrichment for less than ten years.

Multiple Middle Eastern countries are still working to mediate a resolution, as both Washington and Tehran moved away from maximalist positions on enrichment. Before the talks, Trump demanded a permanent halt, while Iran pushed for a deal allowing a civilian nuclear program without additional restrictions.

Al Jazeera reports of where things stand in the following:

Pakistan, which spent weeks positioning itself as a mediator and succeeded in bringing both sides into the same room, emerged with its role intact. But officials acknowledge the harder phase now begins — getting American and Iranian negotiators back into talks before their differences explode into full-fledged war again.

“Pakistan has been and will continue to play its role to facilitate engagements and dialogue between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America in the days to come,” Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said in a statement after the conclusion of the talks.

And Axios in a separate follow-up report also confirms:

Pakistani, Egyptian and Turkish mediators will continue talks with the U.S. and Iran in the coming days in an effort to bridge the remaining gaps and reach a deal to end the war, according to a regional source and a U.S. official.

All parties still believe a deal is possible. The mediators hope that narrowing the gaps could enable another round of negotiations before the ceasefire expires on April 21.

The two sides remain divided over Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium, with Tehran having offered to dilute the stockpile if US sanctions are lifted, while the US apparently required that Iran export all the material.

President Trump has even openly talked about possibly ordering a military raid to seize the stockpile - much of it believed buried deep underground - in what would be an extremely risky and daunting mission.

Tehran has meanwhile accused Washington of making "excessive demands" - with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi having alleged negotiations collapsed because the US changed its position late in the process.

"In intensive talks at the highest level in 47 years, Iran engaged with the US in good faith to end war," he earlier wrote on X. He added: “But when just inches away from ‘Islamabad [Memorandum of Understanding],’ we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade. Zero lessons earned."

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/13/2026 - 16:40
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'Door Is Not Closed': Mediators Still Press For Iran Deal After US Demanded 20-Year Halt To Nuclear Program

The Strait Of Hormuz Crisis Exposes A Fatal Flaw In Economic Thinking

Authored by Kurt Cobb via Resource Insights,

• Even a 4–5% loss in global energy supply could translate into a comparable drop in economic activity due to energy’s central role in all production.

• Disruptions in oil and LNG flows through the Strait of Hormuz are already removing a significant share of global energy, with cascading impacts across industries.

• Rising energy costs trigger widespread knock-on effects—from food and travel to semiconductors—potentially leading to a severe global recession.

A priest, an engineer, and an economist are stranded on a desert island. The first order of business is to get some food. The priest suggests that they all pray. The practical-minded engineer suggests that the three men make a net to catch some fish. But where will they find the necessary materials? The priest and the engineer turn to the economist and ask him if he has any ideas. The economist replies, "Assume a fish."

This well-worn economist joke summarizes one of the chief flaws in contemporary economic theory.

That theory almost completely ignores the role of physical resources, assuming they will always be available in the quantities we need at prices we can afford at the time we need them. When those resources aren't available, that theory begrudgingly accepts that there will be some damage to economic activity, but tends to greatly underestimate the impact.

This conceptual flaw explains why economists in most financial institutions and governments, and thus investors, are not especially alarmed at the loss of energy resources, as stock market indices remain not too far from their recent highs.

For a good summary of how contemporary economic theory goes off the rails, Australian economist Steve Keen offers a mercifully brief and comprehensible explanation. Here I will relate one critical part of that explanation. About 5.7 percent of U.S. GDP is devoted to procuring and distributing energy. Most economists will tell you that a 10 percent decline in energy availability would have a small effect on the U.S. economy. They would take the percentage of the economy devoted to energy, in this case 5.7 percent, and multiply it by 10 percent to arrive at a 0.57 percent reduction in economic activity.

This conclusion is utter nonsense and not even close to what the effects would be.

The reason is that energy is the master resource. It cannot be treated like other resources. Energy is the resource that makes all other resources available. Nothing gets done without energy. The correlation between economic activity and energy use is 0.9 (where 1.0 represents a perfect correlation). This should come as no surprise. When the economy is growing, energy use grows with it as energy fuels the economic activity that pushes growth.

What this implies is that a 10 percent reduction in energy availability is much more likely to result in a decline in economic activity closer to 10 percent than to one-half percent.  For comparison, the real GDP of the United States fell 4.3 percent during the Great Recession, which lasted from December 2007 through June 2009.

So, how much energy is currently being denied to the global economy by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz? No one knows for certain. We do know that liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from Qatar were previously transiting through the strait. And, close to 20 percent of the world's oil supply was also passing through the strait on a daily basis.

None of Qatar's LNG exports are currently passing through the strait. Some estimates say 12 percent of the world's oil is now prevented from leaving the Persian Gulf (though a key pipeline in Saudi Arabia that sends oil to the Red Sea has now been damaged and may add to the total outage). Some oil cargoes from Iran have left the Persian Gulf, and Iraq may soon also send cargoes. Some oil is now being diverted via pipeline to ports other than those on the Persian Gulf. Those pipelines may be attacked as the war continues, so the amount of oil previously exported via the Strait of Hormuz that is being diverted through them could decline.

Okay, here's some math to help you sort out what this all means:

1. Natural gas exports coming from Qatar are no longer being shipped. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2024, Qatar provided 3 percent of the world's natural gas, primarily in the form of LNG. Since natural gas provides about 23.5 percent of the world's energy, by multiplying 3 percent by 23.5 percent, we arrive at a loss of 0.7 percent of the world's total energy. It doesn't seem like much, except the effects are quite uneven. In the United States, we fuel our economy with pipeline natural gas and send the extra abroad both via pipeline and LNG freighters. But 42 percent of Taiwan's electricity is generated using LNG imported primarily from the Persian Gulf. That's a huge hit. And, lack of electricity spells trouble for industry, including the Taiwanese semiconductor industry, which supplies much of the world. Of course, Taiwan will seek out other sources of LNG. But will the country be able to find LNG in sufficient quantities? LNG is usually delivered under long-term contracts, and only a small fraction of it is available in what is called the spot market, which isn't committed under long-term arrangements.

2. The situation with oil is much worse. Oil provides about 31.5 percent of total world energy. Losing 12 percent of it means that the world has lost about 3.8 percent of its energy supply. Again, it may not seem like much, but it is a commodity that has very broad and critical energy and non-energy uses in the economy, for example, as the basis for gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and jet fuel; as a feedstock for many petrochemicals, including plastics; and as a lubricant for countless machines and vehicles worldwide. That loss of oil availability has already had huge impacts—and has sent prices soaring because people and companies feel they cannot do without these oil products. 

We must also keep in mind that the 12 percent estimate may be too small and that the loss is cumulative. Less oil is being delivered into the global economy every day the Strait is closed. As stored oil is depleted, the situation will get desperate, and prices will move much higher. Again, effects are uneven. Countries that rely on imports and aren't wealthy will suffer the most.

3. So let's put the loss of oil and natural gas together to arrive at a total loss of 4.5 percent of the world's energy supply. Since economic activity and energy are closely correlated at 0.9, we can multiply 4.5 percent by 0.9 to get about 4 percent of economic activity potentially subtracted from the world economy every day that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. As mentioned above, the Great Recession caused a 4.3 percent drop in economic activity in the United States. So, it would appear that we are on track for consequences almost as severe as those of the Great Recession if this energy loss continues for much longer.

But this seriously understates the case. The Great Recession was primarily a financial crash. Though oil prices were high, there was no abrupt cutoff of supply to the market. Now, however, loss of energy and related chemical feedstocks is having many knock-on effects on the world economy. For example, rising costs for plastics will tend to curtail the consumption of such products. Rising fuel costs will lead to more expensive air travel as airlines pass fuel costs on to passengers. That means there are likely to be fewer passengers as some choose to fly less often and others are simply priced out of the market altogether. And that means further knock-on effects as fewer hotel rooms are booked and fewer rental cars are rented. Rising diesel and fertilizer prices (nitrogen fertilizer is made primarily from natural gas) will mean higher crop production costs, which are passed on to food processors and ultimately to consumers.

In addition to the squeeze on energy and non-energy products derived from oil and natural gas, about one-third of the world's helium (a co-product of natural gas reservoirs) is now unavailable. Helium is essential for the production of semiconductors. Manufacturers of semiconductors will have to pay much more for helium or curtail semiconductor production. If those manufacturers successfully purchase what they need, then other users such as hospitals (in MRI machines), university researchers, and welders (who use it as shielding gas to make strong welds) will have to go without.

In general, as consumers and businesses pull back on spending due to rising costs and economic uncertainty, demand for many products will fall and companies will be forced to cut back on production and ultimately on workers. As workers are laid off, this reduces overall demand further, which can lead to a cascade of shrinking economic activity.

Even more danger lies ahead. If the war continues and threats on both sides to destroy oil and natural gas infrastructure are carried out in part or in whole, the world could be denied even more oil and natural gas - not just for the duration of the war, but for years afterward, since it would take years to rebuild this infrastructure. Some losses might be permanent, for when underground reservoirs of oil and gas are closed in, they can be damaged for various reasons I won't go into here.

It is not easy for the economy to adjust to such a shock, and the most likely outcome is a severe recession.

Widespread destruction of oil and natural gas infrastructure in the Persian Gulf could quickly lead to a worldwide depression from which it would be difficult to emerge.

We cannot, as the joke above states, just "assume a fish" or, in this case, assume that oil and natural gas deliveries will resume soon at the levels we require at the time we need them to at prices we can afford.

Rather, we are now obliged to take seriously the possibility that our energy-drenched lives will have to be curtailed in ways previously unthinkable.

The risks of a fossil-fuel dependent economy that runs on a just-in-time basis have now become manifest, and we have no choice but to adapt.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/13/2026 - 15:40
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The Strait Of Hormuz Crisis Exposes A Fatal Flaw In Economic Thinking