Daniel Dumbrill
This is genuinely hilarious, and peak on-brand American tone-deafness. The United States is now asking China, the same China it has spent years trying to economically isolate, sanction, and technologically contain, to help it economically isolate & sanction one of China’s own partners: Iran. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is telling Beijing to “get with the programme” and join Washington’s “most crushing economic operation” against Iran. “You are either with us or against us.” China is Iran’s largest oil customer. And yet America expects Beijing to help crush Tehran’s economy. This is the same America that put Huawei on the Entity List, expanded the Foreign Direct Product Rule to strangle its supply chain, pressured allies to ban it from 5G, restricted advanced chips and manufacturing equipment, targeted DJI and Chinese drones, and placed hundreds of Chinese companies under export controls, all while talking about maintaining technological superiority and reducing economic dependence on China. That's the kind of "with us" they were hoping China would continue playing along with. After years of trying to isolate China, they now want China’s help isolating China’s ally. The lack of self-awareness is almost impressive. Still, it’s deeply satisfying to finally see meaningful pushback against the economic tools that have long been used to pressure, constrain, and punish countries around the world.
Arnaud Bertrand
What China just did with the blocking statutes against U.S. extraterritorial sanctions sets quite a major precedent, probably the financial equivalent of what happened with rare earths last year (in the sense that this is China taking a major step to push back against a U.S.
