🇺🇸🇵🇦🇨🇳 Secretary of State Marco Rubio is carefully, yet not openly, messaging here, that the US knows when and how the Chinese plan to blow up the Panama canal locks.

Until 1994 two US Army infantry battalions were based at both ends of the canal right besides the locks (Fort Davis and Fort Clayton), and as Panama abolished its military in 1990, there is now just a few policemen guarding the canals' locks.

Once China attacks Taiwan, Chinese troops, currently pretending to dock workers at the Chinese operated ports in Panama, will destroy the canals' locks to prevent the US Atlantic Fleet to cross into the Pacific, while the Suez canal will be blocked by a Chinese container ship getting stuck.

Rubio's first foreign trip was to Panama to explain president Jose Raul Mulino the reason the US will no longer ignore the Chinese presence in Panama.

📎 Thomas Theiner

💰📈Tether Reports $13B Profit Record Treasury Holdings and Reserve Growth in Q4 2024

The report confirms the accuracy of Tether’s Consolidated Reserves Report (CRR) and details the assets backing its issued tokens as of December 31st, 2024.

https://btctimes.com/tether-reports-13b-profit-record-treasury-holdings-and-reserve-growth-in-q4-2024/

https://tether.io/news/tether-hits-13-billion-profits-for-2024-and-all-time-highs-in-u-s-treasury-holdings-usdt-circulation-and-reserve-buffer-in-q4-2024-attestation/?ref=btctimes.com

@FelipeChannel

#BREAKING

🥇📈🚀GOLD spot hit a new All Time High surpassing $2800/oz, touching 2817/oz!

@FelipeChannel

🇺🇸📞🇻🇪🇻🇪 | Official White House media reported that Trump Administration Special Envoy Richard Grenell was tasked by the Presidential Office to travel to Caracas and discuss deportation flights to Venezuela from United States

This was confirmed by US Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone.

The meeting is a "specific special mission," Claver-Carone told journalists.

"One, the US and Donald Trump expects Nicolas Maduro to take back all of the Venezuelan criminal and gang members that have been exported to the US, and to do so unequivocally and without condition... That is non negotiable." And two, "American hostages that are being held in Venezuela... must be released immediately."

🇺🇸📞🇻🇪🇻🇪 | US expects Maduro's Regime to receive flights of all Venezuelan criminals and gang members and release all imprisoned Americans.

"This is not a quid pro quo. This is not a negotiation in exchange for anything”

🇺🇸✈️🇻🇪🇻🇪 | USAF C-40 VIP transport aircraft left Andrews Air Force base in Washington DC early this morning and is set to land in Caracas shortly

🇸🇻❌💰 El Salvador Complies With IMF Requirements: Bitcoin Legal Tender Status Withdrawn

Congress passed a reform that modifies the so-called “Bitcoin Law” in El Salvador to comply with the stipulated requirements in the deal inked with the IMF last year. These modifications prepare the country to receive $1.4 billion in a credit facility.

https://news.bitcoin.com/el-salvador-complies-with-imf-requirements-bitcoin-legal-tender-status-withdrawn/

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/c4gpv776zd0o

@FelipeChannel

#BREAKING:

🇺🇸❌🇪🇺❗️ | President Donald Trump says he will impose tariffs on the European Union!

🇺🇸💸❗️| President Donald Trump has said he will place tariffs on chips and semiconductors!

🇺🇸💸📤❗️ | President Donald Trump says: Tariffs may cause a short-term disruption

🇺🇸🤝🇨🇦🛢 | President Donald Trump:

We are Bringing tomorrow's tariffs down to 10% on Canadian oil

🇺🇸❌🇨🇺❗️ | In a blow for the normalization process started during Biden Administration, United States Government bans all kinds of financial and commercial transactions with Cuban Communist Regime and its companies, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announces.


On a Twitter/X Post, Rubio said:

The Trump Administration is restoring a tough Cuba policy that protects America and helps the Cuban people.

We've maintained Cuba on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list – where it belongs – and taken other steps.

The Cuban regime's oppression of its people and malign actions must end.

https://x.com/SecRubio/status/1885475964530155702

Cuba is, thus, really free from the "evil capitalist influence"

🇬🇧🪙➡️🇺🇸 — 🏴 ZeroHedge | Something Extraordinary Is Taking Place In The Gold Vaults Below Manhattan | January 30, 2025:

"There was an interesting article overnight in the otherwise conservative and establishmentarian Financial Times, perhaps best known over the past decade for religiously keeping its readers out of the best performing asset class of all time (bitcoin in particular, and crypto in general which have been relentlessly and constantly bashed with fanatical obsession by all of its now former FT Alphaville writers whose track record of picking trades leaves Jim Cramer in the dust).

While normally the FT does not bother with reports about gold, and certainly not global flows of gold, this time it made an exception, observing that in recent months there has been a unprecedented "shortage of bullion in London" (which as a reminder for new readers is ground central of the LBMA which stands for London Bullion Market Association) as a result of which "the wait to withdraw bullion stored in the Bank of England’s vaults has risen from a few days to between four and eight weeks, according to people familiar with the process, as the central bank struggles to keep up with demand."

“People can’t get their hands on gold because so much has been shipped to New York, and the rest is stuck in the queue,” said one industry executive. “Liquidity in the London market has been diminished.”

(...)

The whole point of Trump's tariffs - i.e., his view of trade in his statecraft agenda - is to encourage domestic production and to reposition global trade flows so the US benefits. None of that is applicable for gold, since the US is at best the 5th biggest producer in the world behind China, Russia, Australia and Canada, and no amount of sanctions or tariffs can change how much gold any given mine can produce. Trump knows this; more importantly traders know this, and admit that the "fear of tariffs" has nothing to do with the unprecedented shortage of gold in London, and the sudden flood of physical gold in New York. In fact, the FT itself hints at this:

“The movement of gold needed to make its way into New York, that is basically what has been driving ‘stockpiling’,” said Joe Cavatoni, market strategist at the World Gold Council. “That is leading a lot of people to say, ‘we want to get ahead of it’, and that is driving the futures market into a premium.”

However, Cavatoni said he was cautiously optimistic that the coming tariffs would most likely not apply to bullion. “We are not getting a sense from the rhetoric from the administration that it intends to go after the monetary metals,” he said."

#Geoeconomics

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