WASHINGTON, April 12: US President Donald Trump has said his threat to impose 50% tariffs on goods from countries supplying weapons to Iran was aimed at China.
Trump told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that he had heard reports of China providing anti-aircraft “shoulder missiles” to Iran. He downplayed the possibility of China supplying weapons but said their goods would be taxed if they did.
“I doubt they would do that, because I have a relationship, and I think they wouldn’t do that, but maybe they did a little bit at the beginning,” Trump said.
“But if we catch them doing that, they get a 50% tariff,” he added.
China, Iran weaponised global economy to outmanoeuvre US
China and Iran have weaponised the global economy to corner the US by squeezing global supply chains and leveraging commercial links for strategic gains, according to a report in The Washington Post.
The report cited China limiting rare earth mineral exports to the US last year and Iran’s recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which led to a rise in global oil prices, as examples of adversaries outmanoeuvring Washington in economic warfare.
“Washington once enjoyed a near-monopoly over this type of economic warfare, punishing wayward nations by barring them from using the dollar or enjoying access to Silicon Valley’s most advanced technologies,” the report said.
The US Treasury Department carried out no pre-war analysis of the conflict’s potential impact on energy markets, the report said, quoting Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
Sriprakash Kothari, nominated to become assistant treasury secretary for economic policy, told committee staffers “that not only did he not perform any work related to energy markets leading up to the war, but that he wasn’t aware of anyone at Treasury who did,” Wyden said in an April 9 letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
According to the report, commercial linkages have emerged as potential pressure points in the global economy, as seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and turbulence in US-China relations.
In response, the United States, China and Europe are moving to strengthen their economic defences by investing in domestic production of essential goods, the report said.
“The global economy was designed for the benign environment of the 1990s, when we assumed that China and Russia would be our friends. But we’re living in a period of intensifying geopolitical competition,” said Edward Fishman, author of “Chokepoints,” a history of the US approach to economic warfare.
“This process is just going to keep going on until you have a new global economy,” Fishman was quoted as saying.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly expressed concern that other nations’ economic leverage could “constrain our ability to make foreign policy” unless the US diversifies its supply chains, the report said.
“There is virtually none of the leading-edge industries of the 21st century in which we don’t have some level of vulnerability, and it’s become one of the highest geopolitical priorities that we now face,” Rubio said in a speech last year.
The report added that the Trump administration has been caught off guard when other nations weaponised their economic advantages. Last April, when China retaliated against Trump’s tariffs by banning exports of rare earth materials — critical components in civilian and military products — the President described the move as “a real surprise” on social media.
Similarly, the US appeared to have no immediate response when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. “It turns out that the United States does not have all the choke points. We are in a world where the US simply cannot get away with the stuff that it thought it could get away with,” said Henry Farrell, co-author of “Underground Empire,” a book on economic warfare.
Iran’s continued control over the strait has not only driven up fuel prices for Americans but is also beginning to affect the cost of goods such as mattresses, fertiliser, aluminium, plastics, and fruits and vegetables, the report said.
Pakistan’s first container vessel reaches Karachi port
MV Selen has become Pakistan’s first container vessel to reach Karachi Port after the Strait of Hormuz was reopened in the wake of the ceasefire between the US and Iran.
The vessel MV Selen, arriving from Jebel Ali in the UAE, docked at the Karachi Port on Saturday night, the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) said.
The arrival of MV SELEN, operated by NLC (AP Line) signalled the resumption of containerised trade and reinforced confidence in maritime supply chains, the KPT said in a statement. (PTI)
