The Straits Times reported last night (August 28): "U.S. President Trump hinted that he might impose sanctions on Chinese banks linked to Iran."
On August 27 local time, when asked at the White House whether he would sanction China Bank over transactions involving Iran, Trump did not deny it but instead retorted, "Who says I won't?" He also stated, "Not every decision needs to be publicly announced." Combined with the U.S. Department of the Treasury's previous expansion of secondary sanctions against Iran, this statement has been widely interpreted as the U.S. attempting to cut off Iran’s foreign trade and financial channels through secondary sanctions—part of an extreme pressure strategy aimed at forcing Iran to compromise.
Although Trump’s rhetoric is tough, the current situation remains merely a verbal hint, still confined to the stage of rhetorical deterrence, without yet translating into formal executive orders. In fact, the U.S. Treasury has so far not imposed sanctions on China’s major large banks; past sanction lists have only targeted certain domestic and Hong Kong-based trading, shipping, and logistics enterprises involved in Iranian transit activities.
Analysts generally believe that Trump’s move is more of a carefully calculated political probe. The likelihood of fully implementing sanctions on China’s core financial institutions is extremely low, primarily because the cost would be prohibitively high and could backfire on the United States itself. Imposing sanctions on major Chinese banks would directly trigger a direct financial confrontation between China and the U.S., severely disrupting the global dollar settlement system. This would not only cause turmoil across global cross-border payment chains but also inflict massive costs on U.S. importers, exporters, and multinational corporations—essentially a “kill 1,000, lose 800” scenario.
Trump’s remarks about sanctioning Chinese banks are fundamentally rooted in America’s unilateral hegemonic logic: attempting to forcibly tie the U.S.-Iran standoff in the Middle East to a broader financial confrontation with China. However, constrained by the reality of mutual interdependence among major powers and China’s already established alternative financial settlement channels, this approach comes across more as a mere “verbal extortion.” In response to such extreme pressure, China has clearly expressed opposition and prepared risk contingency plans, ensuring it will not easily be thrown off balance by U.S. tactics.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1874820181984267/
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