The world’s leading economies should set up an “anti-coercion coalition” to combat Beijing’s persistent use of economic coercion to achieve its political goals, the U.S. ambassador of Japan said on March 27.
U.S. envoy to Japan Rahm Emanuel said that collective action is needed to address instances where a country utilizes economic measures to penalize another country due to its political stance, Japan Times reported.
“Economic coercion is political warfare by other means,” Emanuel said at an event at the University of Tokyo.
“It is the use of economic tools, whether that’s embargoes, tariffs, and other types of tools, to politically target a country that you disagree with and try to coerce them into changing their political stance and their political independence,” he added.
Emanuel said that Beijing is a “persistent purveyor” of such tools, and only through coordinated response by countries can such actions be checked.
“If the world does not organize against economic coercion, Beijing will continue to prey on other countries and their economies, large or small, developed or developing, near or far,” he said.
“The world today must develop a comprehensive collective response to combat economic coercion equal to the collective comprehensive actions that China has taken,” the U.S. envoy added.
Read more: US Envoy Says ‘Anti-Coercion Coalition’ Needed to Tackle China’s Economic Coercion
