伊朗制裁或聚焦中国石油贸易

Having had sanctions in place on Iran for some forty seven years. We turn to Nathan Bomey for his take on this, a business reporter at Axios joining us live this morning on Bloomberg this week. And, Nathan, it's great to see you. What do you expect to hear from the treasury secretary this week? We count 2,200 sanctions that have been put on Iran in the last forty seven years. What else is there left to do? Well, so much of the focus right now has been on this blockade that's taken place with the Strait Of Hormuz because, of course, that is the economic engine that drives the Iran economy.

And so by cutting off oil supplies that and then cutting off their ability to ship oil out, that, you know, effectively undermines their revenue engine. So I think the big question is, will these new sanctions be, you know, creative in some way that we haven't seen? And I think the probably most likely avenue, if you're going to be extremely aggressive, would be sanction the friend of the friend and essentially maybe, you know, someone who does business with Iran who you isn't currently affected.

Obviously, China, for example, would be the first country that comes to mind doing business with Iran and, you know, through energy, for example. Could they hit that? That would, of course, be another escalation in The US trade war with China. You know, Nathan, it does feel like a he said he said kind of incident, if you will. I mean, take a look at what Iran is saying. I mean, everyone's kinda waiting to see who blinks first.

The Iran Iranian deputy foreign minister saying on x, the Strait Of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian. This Strait will only be closed and opened under Iran's command. Iran has a lot of leverage here. So, I mean, you do think about it. They learned. Right? The Strait Of Hormuz gives them an incredible weapon against The United States, against the world. So what's their next move? Well, I think we're perishly close to a stalemate here.

I mean, obviously, in chess where nobody has much of a next move. I think that's a bit of a pro a bit of a possibility because I don't think Iran has a lot of options necessarily, but it's not like they're stuck either in the sense that they, if they can maintain their economy sort of in a this sort of somewhat fragile state without having the Strait Of Hormuz, that's obviously not ideal for them, but it's a lot better than in any sort of total collapse, which at this point doesn't seem inevitable.

So I think what the Trump administration is under pressure to do is to do something about $4 a gallon gas prices. I mean, that's really what this is all about for Mhmm. The Trump administration in a lot of ways because we're looking at three months from now, the midterms, and we know that gas prices are the number one thing that affects people's perception of the economy. And so that's bearing bearing down. You said one word that seems most important right now, Nathan, and that's China.

If we really wanna get serious about this and do something different than we have since 1979, it would in fact, be an attempt to squash oil shipments from Iran to China, either through sanctions or tariffs. Is the president actually gonna go there before he meets with president Xi in September? Well, you have to wonder if he wants that stick when he goes for that meeting. And so maybe there'll be some sort of threat or some sort of, you know, suggestion that they could go that far.

You know, I think in negotiations, it's always better to sort of have the threats still available than to have already exhausted all your options. If the Chinese can figure out a way around those sorts of sanctions, then what options do you have? So I think the threat of some sort of crackdown could be actually in some ways more in influential and powerful than actually doing it right away instead of seeing what happens.

Hey, Nathan. Before we wrap up here, something we were watching in the market yesterday, actually was reporting on it too about drone stocks. We definitely saw some movement here, including one that is owned by or, you know, involvement of one of the, president's sons. Junior. Exactly. I mean, this was stock, was on a move, soaring. You've got a new piece out looking at, Trump's announcement, the president's announcement that he would impose tariffs on imported, drones.

What is this about? What's his aim here? I'm I've gotta say that China's gotta be watching as well. Yeah. I was gonna say, speaking of China, certainly, is the big elephant in the room here because trying to put, tariffs on foreign imports of drones is really about this this China war trade war that's going on because, ultimately, Washington just does not trust technology that's coming out of China. And, certainly, as we see the escalation of drone warfare in Russia, Ukraine, I think that has taught a lot of people that any sort of future conflict that The United States might be involved in is probably gonna be heavily drone based.

And the problem is we don't make that many drones in The United States. And so these tariffs are aimed at sort of bringing manufacturing of drones back here. Not a lot of it happening right now. And so I think, you know, the the that's the effort here. But whether or not that's actually gonna happen, we don't know. I mean, these the the tariff strategy for the Trump administration has really been, you know, fairly scatter plot.

So it's it's hard to say whether this is gonna actually, you know, get some activity, but we did see the market react positively. We suggest investors believe that there could be some action there. Yeah. And I machines