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Time of India
11 minutes ago
- Time of India
'You can believe what you want…': Kennedy blasts Murray over ‘Qatari jet bribe' claim against Trump
After Republicans voted no on an amendment to ensure a gifted Qatari jet doesn't transfer to Trump after his presidency for his personal use, Patty Murray called this the "most corrupt administration in history." Senator John Kennedy pushed back during a Senate Committee on Appropriations hearing, saying "I don't think it's productive. It's up to you, this is America, you can say and believe what you want. But if you're going to say somebody has been bribed, you need to say specifically by whom? For what?" Show more Show less
Hindustan Times
11 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
India ramps up US energy imports as Trump pushes balanced trade
Washington: India has dramatically increased its energy purchases from the US since Donald Trump returned to office in January, with crude oil imports surging 51% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year, according to data cited by people aware of the trade specifics between the two nations. The surge follows a February agreement between Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington, where both leaders committed to expanding energy cooperation. (PTI) The energy buying spree reflects New Delhi's commitment to rebalance trade ties with Washington, a key demand of the Trump administration. Liquefied natural gas imports have nearly doubled from $1.41 billion in FY2023-24 to $2.46 billion in FY2024-25. The surge follows a February agreement between Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington, where both leaders committed to expanding energy cooperation. India pledged to boost American energy imports to $25 billion from $15 billion in 2024, while bilateral trade is targeted to more than double from $200 billion to $500 billion by 2030. 'The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to increase energy trade, as part of efforts to ensure energy security, and to establish the United States as a leading supplier of crude oil and petroleum products and liquefied natural gas to India,' the joint statement said. The momentum has accelerated significantly. Indian crude purchases from America jumped 114% to $3.7 billion in the first quarter of FY2025-26 from $1.73 billion in the same period the previous year. In July alone, imports rose 23% month-on-month, pushing America's share of India's total crude imports from 3% to 8%. 'This trend is increasing further from July this year. So, in July 2025 India imported 23% more crude oil from the US compared to June 2025,' said one of the people who analysed the data. 'Also, in India's overall crude imports, while the US share was earlier only 3%, in July that share increased to 8%.' American LNG has emerged as particularly attractive to Indian companies. 'Buying LNG from America is a very attractive proposition for many Indian companies,' said Prashant Vashisht, senior vice president at ratings agency ICRA. 'Firstly, US LNG, which is priced based on the Henry Hub benchmark, is very competitive price-wise compared to other sources. Second, a large number of LNG projects are coming online in the United States, which will mean that more Indian companies will look closely at the American market for tying up long-term contracts.' The timing aligns with America's plans to rapidly expand oil and gas exports. Trump reversed the Biden administration's pause on processing LNG export licences soon after taking office. The US Energy Information Administration expects North America's LNG export capacity to double by 2028, with America providing most of the increase. India's growing appetite for American energy comes as the country is poised to become the world's largest driver of oil demand growth. The International Energy Agency estimates India will surpass China as the major driver of global oil demand growth by 2030, with LNG demand expected to jump 78% to reach 64 billion cubic metres annually. 'Additional long-term LNG contracts worth tens of billions of dollars are being discussed. Indian oil and gas majors are in discussions with their US counterparts for long-term purchase of US oil and gas,' another person familiar with the matter said. 'India considers the US as among the most reliable partners for India's energy security.' However, energy ties remain a point of contention, particularly regarding India's continued purchases of Russian crude oil. The Trump administration has pressed New Delhi to reconsider its energy relationship with Moscow to pressure President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Time of India
25 minutes ago
- Time of India
From Laos to Brazil, Trump's tariffs leave a lot of losers. But even the winners will pay a price
President Donald Trump 's tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers - from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They're now facing especially hefty taxes - tariffs - on the products they export to the United States starting Aug. 7. The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump's demands - and avoided even more pain. But it's unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run - even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump's protectionist policies. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category MCA Data Science Degree Product Management Project Management others Finance Design Thinking Data Science Technology Operations Management Cybersecurity PGDM CXO Healthcare Leadership Management Public Policy Others MBA Data Analytics Digital Marketing healthcare Artificial Intelligence Skills you'll gain: Programming Proficiency Data Handling & Analysis Cybersecurity Awareness & Skills Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Duration: 24 Months Vellore Institute of Technology VIT Master of Computer Applications Starts on Aug 14, 2024 Get Details "In many respects, everybody's a loser here,'' said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School. Barely six months after he returned to the White House , Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America's enormous economic power to punish countries that won't agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do. "The biggest winner is Trump," said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization . "He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded - dramatically.'' Live Events Everything goes back to what Trump calls "Liberation Day'' - April 2 - when the president announced "reciprocal'' taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% "baseline'' taxes on almost everyone else. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs - all of which is now being challenged in court. Winners will still pay higher tariffs than before Trump took office Trump retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump's demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market. The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States - up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years. The European Union and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year - but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan). Also cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola's tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while Trump administration cut Taiwan's tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt. "20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate," Taiwan's president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday. Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he'd announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there. Bashing Brazil, clobbering Canada, shellacking the Swiss Countries that didn't knuckle under - and those that found other ways to incur Trump's wrath - got hit harder. Even some of the poor were not spared. Laos' annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria's $5,600 - versus America's $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn't like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to lose his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it's imported every year since 2007. Trump's decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding U.S. ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax - even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2. "The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington'' to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics . "They're clearly not at all happy.'' Fortunes may change if Trump's tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wend its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump's justifications for the tariffs. "If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil's a winner and not a loser,'' Appleton said. Paying more for knapsacks and video games Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits - or risk losing market share in the United States. But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab. Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike , Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker, have all hiked prices due to U.S. tariffs "This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,'' Appleton said. "Sneakers, knapsacks ... your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.'' Trump's trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates. "The U.S. consumer's a big loser,″ Wolff said.
