The Beijing Blockade

Why the Maduro capture and Iran pressure are really about China’s oil supply and the U.S. Dollar

U.S. President Donald Trump meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping; Wikimedia Commons

Happy Friday from New York City.

What if I told you that the capture of Nicolas Maduro and the repeated U.S. aggressions against Iran were about the same thing? That drug trafficking from Venezuela and nuclear security in the Middle East were convenient legal labels for what’s really a strategy about energy containment.

Below is an essay I’ve been thinking about for a while. After the surprise capture of Maduro from Venezuela and the deployment of multiple armadas and troops around Iran, my thesis has moved from theoretical to strategically logical.

The attacks and threats against Venezuela and Iran are about the same things: China and the U.S. dollar.

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News headlines may say one thing about Venezuela and Iran, but the oil market and geopolitical puzzle say something far different. The current U.S. administration wants you to think that capturing Nicolas Maduro was about drugs, removing a dictator, and enforcing the Monroe Doctrine. While the current troop and naval deployments around Iran are about nuclear security.

There may be elements of truth in each of these explanations but the deeper reason is far more calculated. I’m calling it the “Beijing Blockade.” Because what these moves are really about are not removing dictators or liberating the Iranians from the Ayatollah.

They’re about energy containment. And preserving the U.S. Dollar’s reserve currency status.

The hidden tariff on Chinese manufacturing

China is the world’s largest oil importer. If its manufacturing economy is its greatest strength, energy is its greatest strategic vulnerability. And guess who are the top oil exporters to China?

Venezuela and Iran.

Over 80% of Iran’s seaborne oil exports go to China (about 1.3 million barrels per day). The story is similar for Venezuela, with China buying 85% of its oil exports.

By controlling Venezuelan and Iranian oil exports, the U.S. hits China where they’re weakest — its “teapot” refineries. These are small, independent refineries in areas like Shandong province that rely on the steep discounts of sanctioned oil. Controlling the “shadow fleet” of tankers that move this oil forces the Chinese to buy more expensive, sanction-cleared oil, which drives up manufacturing costs in China (see the February 25th sanctions on 30 new vessels).

If this were just about Venezuelan drugs or Iranian nukes, the U.S. wouldn’t be so focused on these specific Chinese middle-men.

While many in the mainstream media focus on Monroe Doctrine justifications for military action in Venezuela, what many miss is the strategic importance of Venezuelan oil for China. Beyond lower manufacturing costs, China was able to build an “oil-for-debt bridge” in Venezuela, giving them a stronghold in the Western Hemisphere.

Cheap, sanctioned oil is the lifeblood of Chinese manufacturing. They’ve enjoyed $8–$10 per barrel discounts on sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan crude, which increases margins on Chinese industrial exports.

Shutting off this oil effectively raises the production cost of every Chinese-made plastic, chip, and EV. It’s a de facto tariff that doesn’t require U.S. Congressional or Court approval.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling last week (Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump), which stripped the President’s power to impose broad tariffs under IEEPA, the administration needed to pivot. What may have been a secondary strategy for challenging Chinese industrial dominance now may have become the primary one.

If America can’t tax the goods coming out of China, it can try taxing the energy going in.

Destroying the “Petroyuan” experiment

Most importantly for the U.S., oil markets are inextricably linked with the Dollar. While the Trump administration may want to weaken the Dollar, they also want to protect its reserve currency status.

Iran and Venezuela have served as beta testers for a Chinese-dominant future — a world without the U.S. Dollar. This is where the financial plumbing of the global financial system becomes critical.

For decades, the U.S. has controlled the world’s financial switch through the SWIFT network. This messaging system is used for almost all international bank transfers. And it relies on the Dollar.

So practically all international transactions have historically passed through a U.S. checkpoint. If a country was sanctioned — like Iran or Venezuela — the U.S. could easily flip its SWIFT switch to “OFF.”

To counter this, China created the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). It’s basically a Chinese-controlled SWIFT, allowing banks to communicate and settle trades directly in Yuan (RMB).

When China buys oil from Venezuela or Iran through CIPS, the money never touches a U.S. bank or a dollar-clearing house. It moves from a Chinese bank to a sanctioned entity’s account, all denominated in Yuan. This makes U.S. “secondary sanctions” — which usually target banks — almost impossible to enforce because the U.S. has no visibility into or jurisdiction over these transactions (which is also how Russia has successfully evaded so many U.S. sanctions).

And China is not stopping there. They are trying to build an energy fortress that is not only financially out of America’s reach, but is physically out of it too. Its Siberia 2 pipeline with Russia connects through Mongolia, creating a land bridge that U.S. naval blockades (like those we saw in Venezuela) cannot touch. China has also been stockpiling its strategic oil reserves by some 11.6 million barrels per day, which would allow it to survive against a seaborne oil cutoff for about 4 to 6 months.

But this is not just about oil. The U.S. strategy against Venezuela and Iran isn’t only about other stated goals either (drugs, nukes, democracy, etc.).

It’s intended to block and dismantle China’s financial plumbing.

Capturing Maduro and blocking Venezuelan ports disrupted the “oil-for-debt bridge” that allowed China to bypass the Dollar. Targeting the shadow fleet of tankers and applying military pressure on Iran achieves that same goal.

If the U.S. can force these oil transactions back into the dollar-clearing system of SWIFT, it regains its ability to switch China’s economy to “OFF” at will.

And so long as China has access to cheap, sanctioned energy, U.S. tariffs are mathematically ineffective. Which is why I think it’s important to view this latest military aggression in Venezuela and Iran not as some side-quest of an aspiring American autocrat.

It’s the front line of the trade war.

If the U.S. can’t stop the cheap oil, it can’t stop the rise of the Chinese Yuan.

An oil tanker; Photo by Jorick Jing on Unsplash

Trading financial for industrial dominance

America must decide what it wants.

The current administration has deployed a weak dollar strategy through what’s being called the “Mar-a-Lago Accord.” The goal here is to make U.S. exports cheaper, thereby turbo-charging U.S. manufacturing.

The dollar is already down about 12% against a basket of currencies since Trump’s January 2025 inauguration. I’ve previously explained why I think this is a foolish strategy, but it’s also a stealth tariff on Chinese goods. And importantly for Trump, it doesn’t require any new Executive Orders or laws that must go through a divided Congress.

For over 50 years, America has enjoyed a strong dollar policy that gave us incredible privilege. We could borrow endlessly and effectively trade financial assets (U.S. Treasuries) for imported goods. But this created a major problem — it hollowed out the Rust Belt, increased the costs of American labor, and destroyed U.S. manufacturing.

The current administration has decided that industrial dominance is more important than financial dominance. Which strikes me as a bit odd given that U.S. debt continues to balloon.

This strategy could easily backfire as investors demand a higher “term premium” for dollar-denominated assets like U.S. Treasuries given the dollar’s continued depreciation. A higher term premium basically means higher interest rates, which means yields at the long end of the curve (e.g., 30-year U.S. Treasuries) would likely rise. This would make American life far more expensive (higher mortgage, credit card, and loan rates).

It would also substantially increase costs for servicing America’s ~$38 trillion debt. We already pay around $1 trillion in interest annually, which is basically like funding a second U.S. Defense Department.

This weaker Dollar strategy is also at odds with U.S. industrial dominance because America imports so many different parts and components. Those supply chains cannot change overnight. So as the Dollar weakens, those imported parts become more expensive, which has a sticky inflationary effect.

If the U.S. consumer starts revolting over the higher prices and eventual $6/gallon gas, the administration may have to abandon the weak dollar strategy before it can break China’s export-led economic model.

The aggressive moves in recent months against Venezuela and Iran indicate that the U.S. administration at least somewhat understands this reality. While the Dollar weakens against the Euro, Yen, and Yuan, controlling Venezuelan oil and seizing Iranian tankers guarantees that the Dollar remains the only gate for oil to pass through. A weaker Dollar may hurt the U.S. consumer while America transitions to a more manufacturing-based economy and it helps other countries pay their debts, but maybe the current U.S. administration doesn’t care.

Perhaps they value controlling the SWIFT payments “OFF” switch above everything else.

Perhaps this is why the U.S. is also pressuring friendlier allies like Brazil and Guyana to limit their oil sales to China as well.

What we are witnessing is not America the hegemonic power who acts as the world’s policeman. Or an America who tries to push democracy on everyone globally.

What we’re seeing instead is the end of the globalist era and the start of geoeconomic warfare. Where the U.S. uses its currency and oil markets not to maintain order, but to beat Beijing in a winner-take-all industrial competition.

If the U.S. can control the global “ON/OFF” switch for oil, it has way more leverage at the trade negotiating table than it does with just tariff threat alone. Especially in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate many of those tariffs.

Justifying aggression against Iran and Venezuela under the guise of “nuclear proliferation” or “drugs and democracy” is simply applying legal lipstick on a pig. It attempts to provide a legal and moral framework in a decaying liberal rules-based international order.

It’s a necessary distraction designed to maintain international sanctions and to justify military force. Even though many legal scholars concluded that the Venezuelan attacks were illegal and that the President would need Congress to approve any war or military action against Iran.

By framing these military aggressions as security necessities — especially after the strikes against Iran in June 2025 — the U.S. administration can maintain a maximum pressure campaign that serves dual purposes: (i) stopping nukes and dictators; and (ii) starving China’s economic engine of cheap oil.

The big question will be: who cracks first?

China under higher energy costs? Or American consumers under inflation?

The Beijing blockade will only intensify from here.