US Seizes Tanker Carrying Chinese Oil...Beijing Not Amused
The US has seized a third tanker this month carrying oil from Venezuela, and this time it may have grabbed a hot potato: the ship is carrying oil purchased by a Chinese company and headed to China. China is Venezuela's largest oil customer and the seizure of its property could signal a crisis in US/China relations.
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Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Doing well.
Good, good, good.
Better than some other things that we're going to look at today.
That's true, absolutely.
You know, before we start talking about our main thing, which is foreign policy and a few problems that we've brought upon ourselves.
But I wanted to mention that there was a time somebody argued with me that you can divide the system up into two things.
You can talk about foreign policy, but not economic policy, economic policy, but not foreign policy.
And everybody's heard my argument.
They're tied together.
And there's things going on.
We're going to be talking about foreign policy, but I did glance at the gold price like I do every single morning and in the afternoon.
But right now, the last time I looked at it, it said that gold was up $99.
I'm sure that's a mistake.
But I look back again, and it is $99.
And who knows what it'll be at the end of the day.
All we know is that since 1971, the predictions of those who believed that gold and silver would rise, I keep thinking about those silver bulls that have talked about fantastic gains, and they've done it for 20 years, but boy, they're having their day now.
Look at what silver's doing.
Oh, yeah.
And that's good news, I guess, for people who have it and think that's all there is to it.
But it really is bad news for our country.
And that people shouldn't be asking questions, why are my food prices going up?
Because we're in the age of inflation where the government has let loose.
But anyway, the foreign policy, which has an effect on all this, we want to talk about.
Somebody asked me the other day about where I thought the most dangerous area of the world would be with our foreign policy, our intervention.
And I said, boy, I have a lot of choices.
China's Modern Weaponry Threat00:15:51
Yeah, no kidding.
We could talk about Venezuela, we could talk about Ukraine, or we could talk about the Middle East.
I mean, there are a lot of choices.
Also, we could always think about Iran.
And then there's this little squabble that goes on that used to be superficial, but now it's becoming much more serious.
And that is the problem with the United States and China getting along.
But what bothered me this week was the realization of probably Russia and China are getting closer together than ever.
They've always talked about that.
Would they ever get together?
But they never have.
But I think the incentive for getting together and bringing in Iran is a very big possibility.
So I look at that as the tender spot in a whole world that we have essentially brought upon ourselves.
And I would consider it very dangerous.
Yeah, it is.
And we push them together.
U.S. foreign policy pushes them together.
Instead of being friendly in trading, we sanction and we antagonize.
And that really is the basis of our story today, because the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration hasn't been satisfied with blowing up ships with their trust me bro logic that, yeah, these are bad guys and they deserve to die.
Now they've moved to an escalation, which is they're seizing tankers full of oil.
Now they seized their, they seized one a couple of weeks ago, weeks or so ago, and it was a big deal.
In fact, that boat is now just getting into Galveston where they're going to unload the oil.
They're going to steal the oil over here in Galveston.
But then they seized another and they seized one on Saturday that turns out, well, it was chock full of oil that had been purchased by China that was on its way to go to China.
The Coast Guard boarded the ship and said, We will take that ship and we'll take the oil.
And as you can imagine, the Chinese were not happy about that, you know, at all.
What's going to happen if the next time they do that, that there's about 10 guys on that ship that have submachine guns and they take it upon themselves to make the declaration, and everybody that has illegally aborted that ship to steal the oil, they shoot them.
Boy, I'll tell you what, that's the kind of thing that could happen.
Or even if there's an accident that happens and we're blamed for it.
But I'll tell you what, it is a risky business that we're in right now.
You know, they talk about, you know, something that's more than 100 years old.
It was happening in the 19th century, was the gunboat diplomacy.
When you think about it, there's a lot of gunboat diplomacy going on now.
But I was thinking about it then, and I think this is different.
I think the gunboat philosophy, when it started, is when our country was young and we were spreading our wings and we were fussing about that, having our way.
But I think that's pretty old-fashioned, even though we're blowing up little ships because there's terrorists on there and they're calling marijuana, so we have to stop them.
But that is something that I think could be old-fashioned, just as what's going on there.
I mean, they're boarding these ships, and they're surrounding nations.
We've seen the maps of how Ukraine's been surrounded, how Taiwan has been surrounded, how Iran, how about the pictures of Iran or how we do it?
So it is a foreign policy thing.
But since I had been asked this a couple of days ago, where do you think the most dangerous part is?
And it popped into my mind.
And, you know, I shouldn't have said it because since those five days ago, it's gotten worse as far as I'm concerned.
Well, this, I think, is very dangerous and can escalate very quickly.
We've got a couple of clips on it.
Go to the first one.
I think this is from the New York Times.
U.S. Coast Guard boards tanker carrying Venezuelan oil.
Christine Homes said the vessel had been apprehended.
It was a second action this month against a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil.
Now go to the next one.
But the vessel boarded on Saturday called the Centuries is not on the list of entities under U.S. sanctions that is publicly maintained by the Treasury Department.
The people inside Venezuela's oil industry said the cargo belongs to an established China-based oil trader with a history of taking Venezuelan crude to Chinese refineries.
The ship had recently left Venezuelan waters and was in Caribbean waters.
And now go to the next one.
This is what you mentioned, the gunboat diplomacy.
This is from Hedge.
The Chinese-bound tanker was seized on Saturday.
Reuters cited China's foreign policy spokesperson, Li Xian, at a regular press conference, whose press briefing, who said the U.S. seizure of another country's tanker was a serious violation of international law.
He added that China opposes all unilateral and illegal sanctions.
And that is an important point because what they're saying essentially is, yeah, you say that these are sanctioned ships, but you can't just sanction ships on your own and in international waters seize them.
For a sanction to be carried out by all countries, it has to go through the UN.
It has to be accepted.
You can't just unilaterally say, okay, from now on, you can't trade with anyone else in the world, which is essentially what the U.S. has done.
You know, they are practicing the gunboat diplomacy thing by boarding these ships and doing all.
But I think there's a difference and it's evolved over the years.
And I think the weaponry makes a difference.
When you think of those ships out there, if it gets to be a hot war, some of those ships could be blown up pretty fast.
I consider that would be a World War II type of weaponry if they had to go and start doing that.
And that to me is the modern weaponry is another threat.
Also, we have, as the kingpin on the empire, we use tariffs.
That can be pretty serious stuff.
That could impede somebody's wealth and money and take it as theft is stealing the oil.
So those kind of things happen.
There is a tariff war going on.
China's, you know, they responded by when they knew what we were starting to do, they started putting controls on rare earths, which is a very significant event.
So I think this is getting worse, not better.
And it seems like they're living in a daydream because the way they think they're going to finance this, you know, and continue because the deficit is exploding.
So I think if people wonder whether things are getting bad or worse, the two things they look at is the deficit and the debt going up.
And also, you know, the amount of money we spend day to day.
So those conditions.
And also the prices of the precious metal.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That doesn't look good.
Well, it's unusual.
I think this happened once, if I could be wrong, some 20-something years ago, where the U.S. seized a Chinese tanker.
And it really caused a very, very serious rift in the relationship that hasn't been solved.
So it's one thing to pick on Cuba.
It's one thing to pick on Venezuela, who can't shoot back.
But it's another thing to start seizing Chinese property.
And I don't think the Chinese government takes it very kindly.
Now go to the next one.
Go to the skip one and go to the Mario Narfal tweet.
He's basically re-quoting from the Reuters piece.
Beijing slams the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan oil tanker, calls it international piracy.
Beijing is furious, and this time it's not subtle.
They call it a serious violation of international law.
It's carrying 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan crude, stopped in international waters after Trump announced a de facto blockade.
Now go to the next one.
Now, Washington claims that it was falsely flagged and it was part of Venezuela's shadow fleet, which is a term we talked about on the show before.
Really has no meaning.
Carrying sanctioned crude, well, that was unilaterally sanctioned by the U.S., not by the international community.
China's response is that Venezuela has a right to trade.
Unilateral U.S. sanctions don't rewrite maritime law, full stop.
This isn't about one ship.
It's about precedent, says Reuters.
The U.S. is now enforcing sanctions physically at sea against cargo destined for the world's second largest economy, to which I would add Dr. Paul, and also a country that is extremely well armed with very modern weapons and in no mood to be pushed around by Washington.
You know, in the midst of all this, we sent $11 billion worth of weaponry to Taiwan.
That's important.
And you think, well, where did they get this money?
Well, that's the magic of all this.
I think this type of thing that's been going on where it's been ratcheting up and getting worse, whether it's trade policy or warmongering.
And that is, I think, the starting point of the current situation, I believe, is August 15th, 1971, with the giving up of the gold standard.
And the dollar became a fiat dollar.
And silver went from $1.29 to who knows where it is right now, $70, $80, and it's going to go up.
And also gold, you know, going up $100 in a day.
So it's going to continue to do this.
And yet, here we go.
Well, we've complained about it.
And I think the American people are waking up to some degree with all the money we spent to Ukraine.
What did we get out of that deal?
Just think of the billions of dollars.
And how many people died over that?
And you think, how do we get away with this?
And I think it's all temporary, but all bills get paid for.
You say, how do you mean?
Well, I print money, and then you pay for it by higher prices.
You just are being taxed.
People don't see that as a tax.
They see it high prices, but they just want somebody to regulate prices.
But the conditions, I think the starting gun was August 15th, 1971.
And it's just been smoldering and exploding.
And we're in the midst of the bankruptcy.
And this was the acknowledgement, that August 15th was the acknowledgement that we were bankrupt.
But we got away with it now because we had a lot of money in the bank.
We had a lot of resources.
We had a lot of bullets left.
And so we've been getting away with it.
But right now, those things are ending.
People are getting prepared.
Just think of how much preparation there's going on throughout the world with weaponry.
I mean, Europe, you know, who knows where they stand?
But I think that if they think they're going to have less, even they are starting to spend a dollar here and a dollar there.
They always depended on us.
And the American people are sick and tired of it.
Yeah.
Well, people will say, well, what the heck is China doing over there buying oil from Venezuela?
Are they just trying to irritate us?
What's going on?
They're coming in our backyard.
After all, we have the Monroe Doctrine and the Trump variant or whatever it is.
Why are they doing this?
Well, here's one reason.
I found this article this morning, and it really explains why they're buying the oil, why they're over here.
If you go to that next one, this is from June, but it just essentially explains U.S. foreign policy because there are unintended consequences.
The headline is, Venezuela replaces U.S. oil giants with Chinese and Argentine firms.
After U.S. sanctions forced out Western oil companies in May, Venezuela signed at least nine deals with foreign firms, including major Chinese and Argentine companies.
So we told Venezuela, hey, you can't trade with American companies anymore.
And they expected Venezuela to roll over and just play dead.
Venezuela said, hey, we've got to find some customers.
Oil is their number one export product.
It's their number one, it is their entire economy.
And so what are they going to do?
They're going to find a new customer.
And that's what happens.
That's how China got there.
And that, in turn, has made the U.S. even more furious because the Chinese are building refineries there, very large refineries there, because it's very profitable for them to do so.
Whereas our government forbade our own companies from profiting there.
The Chinese are coming in and profiting.
So a lot of this whole thing is about that.
Now we're furious, the unintended consequences of trying to isolate Venezuela.
Every once in a while, I daydream about how would what would have happened if the market was dealing with these kind of problems?
Well, you know, if Venezuela has oil and they don't, they're not that far away from us, and we did buy oil from them when we weren't shooting and trying to start a war with them.
But that it would be such a blessing.
Instead, we end up, you know, fussing with fussing with the Chinese and get tariffs placed on us, I guess, on rare earths.
So they're moving in the opposite direction.
It's still the literature, financial literature, was making excuses for this policy.
Nobody, they say, knew what Trump knew about how beneficial these are because it's magic.
They're getting more money than ever.
They have so much money, they're going to send people checks.
I wonder if we're on their list.
Are we going to get a check?
The good list.
Yeah.
Well, one other thing that's interesting about this, Dr. Paul, is the never-ending, always-shifting rationale for why the U.S. is suddenly obsessed with Venezuela, the regime changing in Venezuela.
Remember, they started blowing up ships saying these are narco-terrorists.
We have to fight narco-terrorism.
It's just like the war on terror, but it's narco-terror.
Well, that wasn't really, that didn't really take hold because Venezuela doesn't produce or ship fentanyl.
So the whole idea that these are fentany smugglers didn't work out.
So then it was illicit oil.
They're transporting illicit oil.
We got to take the tankers.
Well, Christy Noam, after they seized the Chinese ship, she introduced a whole new rationale that sort of melded the two.
And if you go to that post from our Homeland Security Director Secretary, she explained what happened over the weekend.
She said, in a pre-dawn action early this morning on December 20th, the U.S. Coast Guard, with the support of the Department of War, apprehended an oil tanker that was docked in Venezuela, that was last docked in Venezuela.
New Rationale for Seizures00:02:33
Now, here's the part that's important: the United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco-terrorism in the region.
We will find you and we will stop you.
So they had to seize the oil because it's used to fund narco-terrorism.
They put the two together.
Well, our colleague at the Ron Paul Institute, Adam Dick, he started looking at that, scratching his head, saying, hold on a minute, this is cockamami.
This is crazy.
But at that next clip, we just published this on a page this morning.
Venezuela's drug running hobbyists is what he called it.
And it's very great because he was reading what Christy Noam was saying.
And he goes to the next one.
Here's what he said.
He's scratching his head, saying, Got that?
Noam is saying that these Venezuelan narco-terrorists, the combating of whom has become a primary focus of the U.S. military, cannot even make ends meet through their drug enterprise.
Instead, the drug running is all just a hobby funded by other activities typically pursued by ordinary businesses, such as using tankers to transport oil.
Go to the next one.
We're supposed to be afraid of these guys.
Drug cartels are known for members being able to buy fancy homes and cars with the proceeds of their drug activities.
By contrast, the Venezuelan drug threat that supposedly calls for the U.S. military to gall all out in threatening the nation of Venezuela apparently can't even operate in the black.
Oil shipping is a needed activity for members to pay their rent and stop repo men from towing away their Kia Fortes.
So it's sort of a funny tongue-in-cheek way of saying, are they insane?
Are they saying that the drug business is so unprofitable, but now they have to own the oil business to fund the drug business?
It's crazy.
It doesn't make any sense.
Well, the end of all this can't be good unless, since I frequently will look at the old bad stuff, that'll wake up some people and they're going to do the right thing next time.
But I don't think the people are ready to wake up and all of a sudden change our foreign policy because there's way too much support for economic intervention and the military intervention.
You know, if you put our position up against a lot of people that like the foreign policy, they consider individuals like I wimps.
The Message Needs Hope00:03:16
You know, you guys are chicken.
You go out and battle.
You're not a manly person.
You've got to be willing to do this.
And then they put the military up.
You know, I got to thinking, this Department of War, this thing, what if we had a movement going on and said, that's ridiculous.
We're in war all the time.
Why don't you make it a Department of Peace?
Can you imagine the ridicule you would get for peace?
What kind of guys are you?
You're not tough at all.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Well, I'm going to close out.
And I did send over a bonus clip to our friends in the back.
And I hope, I hope, oh, there you go.
You found it.
That's great.
Great job.
Thank you.
Just to remind you, this is probably going to be our last live show before Christmas.
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Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in to the Liberty Report today because we believe so sincerely that there's a different method of managing a government or running a government or shrinking the government.
And it has little to do with what we've been putting up with quite a few decades.
And probably one of the most annoying things is the foreign policy, the foreign policy of war.
And it's almost continuously.
But like I've made the point many times, the war can't be fought without concern of economic policy.
And right now, we continue to face these horrendous debt, horrendous spending.
And as long as this happens, conditions are going to get worse and it's going to be leading more to hostilities than ever before.
This is why it is so important that we get the finances to keep our message out because the message is so important.
I believe things can be changed.
And I believe that it's wonderful that we have the internet, but it still needs word of mouth.
It needs people supporting and encouraging us to continue this effort.
I do want to thank everybody once again for tuning in to the Liberty Report.