India's Trade Deficit Surges As Energy Import Prices Soar
India's trade deficit soared in April by more than analysts expected, as the surge in oil and gas prices hiked the Indian energy import bill.
The trade deficit jumped by $8bn from $20.6bn in March to $28.38bn last month, higher than the $26 billion estimate, on a broad-based increase in imports. At the same time, total exports grew by 13.8% in April from a year earlier to hit $43.56 billion.
Oil imports sequentially rose by around 60% MoM likely driven by higher volumes in April (vs. March lows) and higher oil prices.
The value of imports soared as international oil and gas prices jumped amid the Middle East conflict that forced India and every other major crude oil importer to source more expensive supply from producers not dependent on the Strait of Hormuz, which remains closed to most tanker traffic two and a half months after the Iran war began. Meanwhile, petroleum product exports rose by around 48% mom s.a. likely driven by higher exports to Singapore. Gold imports rose sequentially likely driven by higher volume imports of semi-processed gold for refining and higher prices. However, gold imports (in volume terms) may likely decline in May following the government's import duty hike to 15% from 6%.
Overall non-oil exports remained strong, led by stronger electronics exports. Exports to Saudi Arabia and the UAE recovered in April from its March lows, but remained well below the last year's levels, while exports to the US increased both sequentially and in year-over-year (yoy) terms. Services trade surplus remained strong at around $21bn, supported by robust services exports.
The widening trade deficit and the soaring energy import bill are pressuring the government's current account and finances, as the oil supply crisis is already seeping through India's economy. In the past week, India imposed draconian tariffs on gold imports to defend the currency which has plunged to a record low against the dollar.
Since the war began and cut off over 40% of India's crude oil flows, those that passed through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the highest-flying economies in Asia has seen its oil import bill soar, investors fleeing the capital market, and the local currency plunging to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar.
Analysts have started to raise inflation estimates and reduce forecasts of this year's economic growth in India, which is beginning to feel the oil supply shock well beyond the actual disruption of deliveries of oil, LNG, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the primary cooking fuel in the world's most populous country.
The oil shock that the war has created will weigh on India's economic growth in the current fiscal year to March 2027. BMI, part of Fitch, expects India's GDP growth to slow to 6.7% in the 2026/2027 fiscal year, down from 7.7% in 2025/2026, largely due to the oil price shock.
“Trump has done so much damage to libtardery that the Democrats will need a decade of uninterrupted power to undo it, which they're not going to get.”
- Matt Forney on X
If you learned anything from this week’s extravaganza in Beijing, it is that Donald Trump is aggressively re-aligning world relations so that the USA does not end up one of the losers in the global resource scramble that lurks darkly behind all current events.
China does not intend to be an eventual loser, either, though it has lost a lot of traction lately.
The Eurolands are certainly the main losers, embracing loserdom as the old and sick long for death.
India and some of the BRICs countries, are looking a little loser-ish just now.
The primary resource all nations scramble for is oil. Without lavish supplies of oil, you can’t have an advanced techno-industrial economy and, as the feckless Eurolanders learned the hard way, there really isn’t an adequate substitute for oil. The flow of oil depends on economically producible reserves of oil country-by-country, but also on geographic advantage, as we are learning just now in the Hormuz crisis.
“Europe’s crude oil production started its permanent decline in 2001. Asia-Pacific’s production hit a maximum in 2010, and it has been declining since. Africa’s peak oil production took place in 2008, and it has been mostly declining since.”
Also, turns out, the peak oil story is still real, despite fifteen years of shale oil miracles.
The Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia are probably past peak. American shale oil is in the peaking zone, too — the Permian Basin in Texas is running short of sweet spots. The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (AMWR) is open for leasing, but it is expensive to drill and produce in the harsh arctic region and the US Geological Survey estimates recoverable reserves there between 7.7 – 10 billion barrels — America consumes roughly 7.5 billion barrels-a-year, so. . . .
There’s Canada, of course, and its tar sands, but the Great White North these days leans rather hostilely towards its neighbor to the south (us). Otherwise, North America is pretty fully explored oil-wise. There can’t be a whole lot of hidden, un-tapped “elephant” fields out there. On the plus side, America enjoys its geographic advantage, comfortably cushioned between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, far from the madding crowd of Eurasia.
We have lately trumpeted our supposed acquisition of Venezuela, but projected production of US companies there looking ahead several years would be under a million barrels-a-day while the US uses 20.5-million barrels a day. As for Venezuela’s jungle-bound oil sands, well, for now, fuggeddabowdit.
Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources puts its commercially recoverable oil resources (with current technology and prices) at around 80-billion barrels, which is a lot, and leaves Russia in a theoretically favorable place for the short term, anyway. China uses about 17-million barrels-a-day and imports about 70-percent of that. Its imports of Iranian oil are substantial but obscured in official statistics due to the evasion of US sanctions. The Hormuz blockade has put a hurt on China.
Here’s how the global resource scramble translates into geopolitical behavior: As has been evident for some time, US interests are increasingly alienated from Euroland’s interests, and better aligned with Russia’s interests. Europe is demonstrably insane these days, roiling with loose talk as it whirls around the drain. Russia, under V. Putin, looks more like the adult in the room. Even Russia’s military operation in Ukraine looks rational if you consider how the EU and the CIA started the damn thing in the first place circa 2014 for the very purpose of provoking Russia.
Mr. Trump has yearned to normalize relations with Russia since he stepped on-stage in 2016, to the great consternation of America’s neocons, CIA shadow-meisters, and the born-again communists running the Democratic Party (who seem to resent Russia ditching Marxism-Leninism thirty-five years ago). This week, the US and China have mutually proposed becoming “partners” rather than rivals on the world scene. We will surely remain mutually wary, but apparently things have changed.
Most urgently, China would like its oil imports from the Persian Gulf restored, and the obvious way to make that happen would be for them to lean on Iran to stop screwing around and come to terms with the US — give up the enriched uranium and stop laying jihad on everybody near and far. We’ll know soon enough if China will do that for us, and we have some goodies promised for them, Nvidia chips, soybeans, and more.
Mr. Trump is rearranging the global game-board bigly, and the net result will be the sorting-out of winners and losers.
Iran is the poster boy for that. It could go either way for them, soon, and rather sharply.
If Iran’s jihad-happy leaders just quit FAFOing, they have the chance to re-enter the global community as an advanced modern economy with a comfortable standard of living.
Or, the US could just blow up what’s left there.
China will probably deliver that message forcefully in the days ahead.
There remains, however, the dirty business of America’s domestic enemies, of whom we learn more and more each week.
This week, it was the testimony of “whistleblower” CIA agent James Erdman that the CIA worked sedulously to conceal the true origins of Covid-19. It looks pretty much like what half of America has suspected all along: that Covid was a trip laid on the nation by its own Deep State (mainly the CIA), in concert with the rogue Democratic Party, for the express purpose of queering the 2020 election.
Related seditious operations apparently continue to this very hour. Former CIA Director John Brennan told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace this week: “There’s still a legion of professionals in the law enforcement environment, the Department of Justice, as well as the CIA and other places — the ones who are refusing to follow politically motivated prosecutions, those who are refusing to support any type of political activities on the part of the Trump administration. . . .” Did he just admit that the conspiracy he kicked off in 2016 is still ongoing? And that he is an active party to it? I think so. Do you think Joe DiGenova noticed that down in the DOJ’s Southern District of Florida?
Just as astoundingly, this week former FBI Director James Comey told CNN’s Kasie Hunt that he “still speaks regularly” to current FBI employees. Say, what. . . ? He palavers with the very agency that is investigating him for serious felonies, such as threatening the life of the US president? Sounds a little out-of-order, ya think? Does he long to spend the rest of his life as captain of the ping-pong team at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary?
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
A “culture of fraud” infected Minnesota state agencies, resulting in more than $9 billion in taxpayers’ money squandered, a new legislative report says.
“We finally pulled the curtain back—and the public is grateful,” state Rep. Kristin Robbins, chair of the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, said May 13 during a session that summarized 16 months of investigative work.
Many fraudsters “came to believe that fraud was tolerated and paid in a big way,” according to a report that Robbins released at the meeting. The report summarizes the committee’s attempts to dissect how state agencies became so mired in fraud.
Testimony from dozens of witnesses, including state employees and whistleblowers, demonstrated that Gov. Tim Walz’s administration neglected “basic due diligence” to protect taxpayers’ money, and instead “prioritized getting as much money out the door as possible” via government-benefits programs, the report says.
The administration also allegedly punished whistleblowers and “ignored and consciously downplayed shocking levels of fraud” in more than a dozen Medicaid-funded programs, such as autism services, medical transportation, and adult day care, according to the document.
“All of these failures have created opportunities for serial fraudsters to steal billions from Minnesota taxpayers across multiple programs for years,” the report says, estimating $300 million in federal meals fraud and $9 billion in Medicaid fraud. Those numbers exclude “potential hundreds of millions more in fraud in child care” and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the report notes.
The governor’s office did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment by publication time.
Walz has repeatedly defended his track record on tackling fraud, including in a May 6 news release, stating: “We’ve made significant progress to strengthen programs and root out fraud. Today, we’re building on our success by putting an even stronger structure in place; adding leadership, improving oversight, and ensuring these programs are managed with the discipline and accountability Minnesotans expect.”
Robbins said accountability is lacking because no one in state government has been fired for failures, nor even for falsifying records—a finding that the Office of Legislative Auditor, a state watchdog, released early this year.
The new report from Robbins’s committee was released May 13, the same day that Vice President JD Vance, who heads a new anti-fraud task force, announced that the federal government was withholding $1.4 billion from home health and hospice operations suspected of fraud across the nation. So far this year, fraud concerns prompted federal officials to withhold $350 million from Minnesota’s Medicaid program.
Five Republicans including Robbins prepared the report. The committee’s trio of Democrats were invited to prepare their own version, mirroring a practice used in Congress.
Two Democratic committee members at the meeting, Reps. Dave Pinto and Emma Greenman, did not say whether they would take that step. Both disputed what they called “partisan” characterizations in the report; Pinto and Greenman abstained from voting on the GOP-authored report. All four Republicans who were present voted to accept it.
Republican Rep. Isaac Schultz noted that despite allegations of partisanship, he sees signs of cooperation between the two parties. Just two weeks ago, the legislature approved “four great fraud-prevention bills on a bipartisan basis that were supported by members of this committee,” Schultz said, adding that one such bill called for “stopping grants going to convicted fraudsters.”
Remedies Proposed
The 84-page report contains numerous recommended changes in agency procedures and culture, and highlights broken internal processes.
For example, a law requires the Department of Human Services to annually review whether Medicaid beneficiaries are indeed eligible. The agency regularly skipped those verifications, and had conducted none since 2020, the report says, possibly costing “tens of millions of dollars.”
Under pressure from the committee and the public, the department conducted a review on March 20. It found “31,529 ineligible Minnesotans were receiving benefits,” who were then removed from the rolls, the report says.
Agency bureaucrats, who “viewed their role as supportive consultants rather than providing actual oversight” as they doled out taxpayers’ money, must instead use their authority to withhold payments and take other action, the report says.
The report also calls for agencies to log whistleblower complaints and hotline reports, then report those, along with actions taken, to lawmakers.
Fraud concerns and suspicious billing trends need to be tracked and reported too, the report says.
Another major recommended change: “Require electronic attendance records for child care, adult day care, sober homes, autism centers ... and other billable services ... before payments can be made.”
Committee’s Value Debated
The committee—the first of its kind in state history—began working in January 2025, nearly a year before Minnesota’s massive fraud scandals gained widespread national attention and sparked multiple federal probes.
As Robbins opened what could be the committee’s final meeting, she encouraged state lawmakers to re-establish the committee when the legislature reconvenes next year.
“The work we’ve done has hopefully carved a path for the next legislature in the next biennium to continue this important work,” she said, calling it “historic.”
The Republican lawmaker withdrew her bid for the governorship May 1, saying she would fight for improvements “from the outside” after her current term as a state representative expires in January 2027.
“It’s going to take many years, unfortunately, to undo the damage that has been done to taxpayers and vulnerable residents,” Robbins said. “But we must continue to expose the fraud, to strengthen internal controls and to make sure that fraudsters and agency officials are held accountable.”
Democrats Pinto and Greenman said the committee should have proposed legislation that could spark meaningful changes.
“Fighting fraud is urgent. Solutions were needed now,” Pinto said.
Robbins and other Republicans responded that the committee’s role was investigative, not legislative, and that the committee’s findings did inspire proposed laws.
Greenman said the document contains “misleading” information, and “no Democratic leader [is] left undisparaged” in the report. She defended the work of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in prosecuting fraud cases, and said the report fails to give him due credit.
Japan's Refinery Utilization Hits 73% As Strategic Oil Stocks Flow In
With global refineries working overtime to convert oil into much needed product, Japan's refinery utilization rates also surged in May, as releases from petroleum reserves and increased supply of non-Middle East crude are easing the crude supply crunch seen in March and most of April, OilPrice reported.
For the first time since March, refiners in Japan have boosted their average utilization rate to above 70% in the past two weeks, data from the Petroleum Association of Japan (PAJ) showed on Wednesday.
Utilization rate of the designed capacity was 73.3% in the week to May 9, following 77.3% utilization rate the week prior to May 2, the data showed. These run rates compare to utilization rates in the 60% range in April, according to the weekly statistics data released by the PAJ.
Resource-poor Japan is one of the biggest energy importers globally and relied on the Middle East for as much as 95% of its oil imports before the war. Most of the oil comes from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Of these Middle Eastern supplies, about 70% typically arrived in Japan on tankers traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.
As the war choked supply from the Middle East, Japan began releasing oil stocks from national reserves at the end of March, as part of the IEA-coordinated record-high release of 400 million barrels of oil and fuel. Japan is releasing a total of 80 million barrels of oil stocks, including 54 million barrels of crude and 26 million barrels of oil products as part of the IEA's 400-million-barrel release.
The ongoing stocks release, which is Japan's biggest, is helping refiners increase throughput. So is alternative supply from producers outside the Middle East, including rare cargoes from Azerbaijan and Latin America.
Some of the largest refiners in Japan, including Cosmo Energy Holdings and Idemitsu Kosan, aim for average utilization rates of more than 90% in the current fiscal year ending March 2027.
Cosmo Energy's outlook for the fiscal year include assumptions that crude oil production in the Middle East would normalize in August, and crude procurement "from September onward."
The Central Intelligence Agency and Mexico are criticizing CNN for spreading false information after the news outlet published a report - citing anonymous sources - claiming that CIA operatives had directly participated in targeted killings as part of the U.S. intelligence agency’s alleged “secret war” against cartel members in Mexico.
The report, published on May 12, alleged that CIA Ground Branch officers had been present at or involved in targeted assassinations on mostly mid-level cartel members over the past year, including a March 28 vehicle explosion on a congested highway in Tecámac, in the State of Mexico just outside Mexico City, that killed Francisco Beltrán—known as “El Payín”—an alleged Sinaloa Cartel member, and his driver.
“This is false and salacious reporting that serves as nothing more than a PR campaign for the cartels and puts American lives at risk,” CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons said in a statement on X.
Mexican Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch also rejected the report.
“The Government of Mexico categorically rejects any version that seeks to normalize, justify or suggest the existence of lethal, covert or unilateral operations by foreign agencies on national territory,” he wrote on X. “Any international cooperation is limited to the exchange of information, institutional coordination and formal mechanisms established by the Government of Mexico.”
CNN and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment.
The State of Mexico Attorney General’s Office has also issued a statement that “firmly rejects” any of its members telling journalists that an explosive device had been planted inside Beltrán’s vehicle, contradicting CNN’s reporting.
“An explosive device had been hidden inside the vehicle, the State of Mexico’s Attorney General told CNN,” the contested report reads.
The office said its inquiry into the two deaths remains active and that investigators had yet to establish a cause.
Tuesday’s dispute follows weeks of compounding friction between Washington and Mexico City over efforts in Mexico to address cartel crimes.
On April 19, two U.S. Embassy employees died in a car crash in Chihuahua state, along with two Mexican state officials. Chihuahua Attorney General César Jáuregui Moreno said the four officials were on their way back from an operation targeting drug laboratories in the municipality of Morelos when the incident occurred.
The two U.S. Embassy employees were later reported by The Associated Press to be CIA agents collaborating with Chihuahua officials—claims the White House did not deny.
The White House on April 22 said that U.S. President Donald Trump was dissatisfied with Mexico’s official response to the incident. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had said that no agents from any U.S. government institution may operate in Mexico without approval from Mexico’s federal government, implying that the operation with local officials in Chihuahua state had not been given the green light by Mexico City.
Also in April, the Department of Justice indicted Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya and nine current and former Sinaloa officials on drug trafficking and weapons charges, a development that has further strained the relationship between Washington and Mexico City.
The U.S. Treasury Department separately imposed sanctions on an international narcotics distribution network linked to the Sinaloa Cartel.
