War-Driven Oil Costs Lift China's Factory Prices to a Near Four-Year High

China's factory-gate prices rose 3.9% from a year earlier in May, exceeding forecasts and marking the fastest pace since July 2022, according to the South China Morning Post. The rise in the producer price index (the gauge of prices manufacturers charge at the factory gate) was driven chiefly by higher oil and petrochemical costs, as the war between the United States, Israel and Iran disrupted crude shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran is a major supplier of crude to China, and the partial closure of the strait has reduced those flows. Production material costs accelerated to 5.2% from 3.8% the prior month, with mining and raw materials showing the largest increases. China's consumer inflation stayed muted, a divergence that indicates cost pressure is entering through energy and industry rather than household demand.

The pattern is significant from a sound-money perspective. The price increases are not the product of a domestic credit boom or strong consumer demand but of a supply shock added to years of accumulated stimulus. When central banks have already expanded credit for years, an external shock to real inputs can turn previously inactive monetary expansion into visible inflation. Producers must choose between absorbing the cost in their margins or passing it on to customers.

Markets had been positioned cautiously ahead of the American figures. In Tel Aviv, equities declined while the oil and gas index advanced, the shekel weakened past 2.96 to the United States dollar, and traders awaited the consumer price data, Globes reported. Those figures, released on June 10, showed United States consumer prices rose 0.5% in May and 4.2% from a year earlier, with the energy index up 3.9% and accounting for more than 60% of the monthly increase, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The result reinforced the pattern visible in China, in which energy costs tied to the war are the principal driver of inflation. Oil prices and the status of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil normally passes, remained the most important factor for global pricing, according to The Hindu.