November 21, 2025
The global economic landscape today is defined by the enforcement of the United States’ “economic statecraft,” which is forcibly realigning energy supply chains in Asia. The most critical development is the expiration of the U.S. wind-down period for dealings with Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s largest oil producers. Today, November 21, marks the deadline for winding down transactions, a policy move that has triggered an immediate and steep contraction in India’s crude oil imports from Russia.
Preliminary data indicates that the looming sanctions have already caused a severe disruption. Russian oil shipments to India have dropped by approximately 66% in November compared to the previous month, as Indian refiners halted new orders to avoid running afoul of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This sharp decline is exacerbated by the U.S. administration’s imposition of a 25% tariff on India’s Russian oil purchases, levied on top of existing reciprocal tariffs. Analysts project that the resulting shift to more expensive non-Russian crude, combined with an 8% rise in Brent prices, could inflate India’s annual oil import bill by an estimated $6–7 billion (Sahai, Carnegie Endowment, 2025).
Washington is actively stepping in to fill the supply void it helped create. India’s crude oil imports from the United States have surged to their highest levels since 2021, with U.S. suppliers now capturing approximately 8-10% of India’s import market. This pivot is aligned with the broader “Mission 500” initiative, a bilateral target to expand India-U.S. trade to $500 billion by 2030. The strategic intent is clear: to use energy dependence as a lever to integrate India more deeply into the U.S. economic sphere and detach it from the “axis of evasion” involving Russian energy (The Hindu, 2025).
Elsewhere in the region, markets are digesting Japan’s October Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released this morning. The report showed headline inflation accelerating to 2.9%, keeping pressure on the Bank of Japan to consider a rate hike in December to defend the yen. This data point adds another layer of complexity for Asian policymakers, who are now navigating a high-tariff, high-inflation environment driven largely by external geopolitical decisions.
