Posted on 10/16/2025 2:57:04 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
India's goods exports to the US, its largest foreign market, dropped sharply by 20% in September and nearly 40% in the last four months, as Trump's steep tariffs took effect, data shows.
September was the first full month of Washington's 50% tariffs on Indian goods, which kicked in on 27 August. This includes a 25% penalty for Delhi's refusal to stop buying oil from Russia.
"US has become India's most severely affected market since the tariff escalation began," said Ajay Srivastava of Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think tank.
-snip-
According to GTRI, the most significant impact of the tariffs has been felt by labour-heavy sectors such as textiles, gems and jewellery, engineering goods, and chemicals, which have suffered the heaviest losses.
Shipments to the US have seen four consecutive months of decline, and are down 37.5% - from $8.8bn (£6.5bn) in May to $5.5bn in September.
The drop in exports have also contributed to India's trade deficit (the gap between what a country imports and exports), which widened to a 13-month high of $32.15 billion in September.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Guess I’ll have to get my Ghee and curry powder locally.
CC
There is a Russian-owned oil refinery in India. Specifically, Nayara Energy, which is backed by Rosneft, operates a 20-million tones-a-year oil refinery. Additionally, Reliance Industries has increased its imports of Russian oil, indicating a significant presence of Russian oil in the Indian market.
I’ve known people who tried to do business in India. Essentially, their economy operates on bribes. It would be hard for the Indian government to ban Russian oil if the Russians are extending significant bribes to people in the government who can bureaucratically hold up any effective action by the government to ban Russian oil. It’s a situation similar to ours where Trump tries to do something and a judge stops him. Except in the United States every citizen can find out what is going on. Anything happening in Indian politics is more or less occurring behind closed doors.
Trump is trying to create enough pain in non-oil related areas so that wealthy people who are losing money made in America will counter-bribe the Russians so the Indian government can eventually neutralize the political influence of the Russians. It’s not three-D chess, but it’s not checkers either.
Some Indian refiners are preparing to cut Russian oil imports, with expectations of a gradual reduction, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, with the U.S. pressuring New Delhi to stop buying Russian crude to help end the war in Ukraine.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured that India will stop buying oil from Russia, India's top source of imported oil.
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/Indian-refiners-prepare-to-cut-Russian-oil-imports-sources-say
[There is a Russian-owned oil refinery in India. Specifically, Nayara Energy, which is backed by Rosneft, operates a 20-million tones-a-year oil refinery. Additionally, Reliance Industries has increased its imports of Russian oil, indicating a significant presence of Russian oil in the Indian market.
I’ve known people who tried to do business in India. Essentially, their economy operates on bribes. It would be hard for the Indian government to ban Russian oil if the Russians are extending significant bribes to people in the government who can bureaucratically hold up any effective action by the government to ban Russian oil. It’s a situation similar to ours where Trump tries to do something and a judge stops him. Except in the United States every citizen can find out what is going on. Anything happening in Indian politics is more or less occurring behind closed doors.
Trump is trying to create enough pain in non-oil related areas so that wealthy people who are losing money made in America will counter-bribe the Russians so the Indian government can eventually neutralize the political influence of the Russians. It’s not three-D chess, but it’s not checkers either.]
India has less scamming exports? What else do they produce except pollution and disease.
They should be cut off entirely until they Crack down on their prolific scamming industry which targets the US.
India had been allied with the Soviet Union for decades, and now an alloy of Russia. Which makes no sense, considering that Russia is also aligned with China (India’s nemesis).
It would make more sense for India (which was once ruled by the British) to ally with the USA and then have Pakistan ally with Russia.
Whenever I see an Indian H-1B recipient, I immediately think of the Thuggee’s. It’s what most of them are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
India has one of the fastest growing GDP numbers in the world. It is also nearly the fastest growing oil consumer in the world. It ranks number three in oil consumption behind the US and China.
India actually has oil domestically and produces about 900,000 barrels per day. Their consumption far out strips that and like most oil fields in the world theirs are going empty. Consumption is not. It continues to grow.
They have coal and they choose coal for many new projects for that simple reason, that they have it.
India is surprisingly food self-sufficient. They’re the number two producer of rice, wheat and fruits and veggies in the world. This is amazing given that population.
The measurement appears to be contested because there are a few categories where self-sufficiency is not achieved. This would seem to be poor reason to contest in that the United States is grossly non self-sufficient in certain categories of food, namely fruits and vegetables particularly tomatoes.
All India, or any of the other whiny countries need do, is to match THEIR inport tarrifs to ours. The minute they lower theirs to, say 20 percent, the Trumpster will lower our inport tarrifs to match theirs.
Duh!
India hoes mad.
When the Ukraine war started the Russians started selling their oil to China and India at a huge discount to the Brent Sea Crude spot price. To make up for the Europeans that embargoed their oil.
I can not recall IF it was a 30% discount OR a $30/Barrel discount. Either way, it was enough that the Indian’s started buying much more Russian oil than they could use domestically. They were then selling the excess petroleum distillates or the actual petroleum by various methods. Some by trans loading the oil. Others by just changing the BOL and hoping to not get caught.
Based on your knowledge of the oil industry, is this still happening?
India was doing less than 9 billion a year in the US. Not a big trading partner at that..
My father in law(88) sold textile manufacturing machinery all over the world. Everywhere from domestically here in NEw England and the Carolinas to Asia and South America.
He has lots of stories of dealing with various people and close calls in places like Columbia.
He enjoyed dealing with almost all of them except the Indians. Which he said were always the worst snakes around. Even after the deal was done they would still try to get you to agree to something else. They were never trustworthy. They were sneaky, slippery, scumbags(his words).
He especially loved dealing with the Chinese/Taiwanese.
They were great to deal with and always treated him very well.
Eff India and their horde of H1B job thieves.
President Trump is going to deport you back to India. Pack your bags.
Short answer is I don’t know.
Longer answer is India produces 900K bpd and consumption is about 5 million bpd.
The entire difference is not from Russia, but a solid chunk is.
The one significant obstacle to the scenario would be that this is all sea-borne. The ports offload from the Russian ships. For them to forward the oil to Europe would require either Russian ship just stops at the India port, does not offload, and then continues to Europe.
Way too visible.
Offloading at the Indian port and then reloading to a non Russian ship is not trivial. The pipelines and pumps do not reverse direction casually. Reversing the Houston flow from import to export required quite a lot of time, years as I recall. India has zero expectation of ever being an exporter so they would have to re-configure “from scratch”. Non trivial task.
The “shadow fleet” as camouflage? Doesn’t make sense. If Europe needs that oil they would not be attacking the shadow fleet.
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