Opinion by Mathew Carr
It’s one thing when missiles and a complex double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz stops a fifth of global oil trade.
It’s another when Asia trade routes are disrupted because Indonesia wants to enforce its sea rights in a brazen Trump way, potentially via a toll on ships.
Check this out, Financial Post/Bloomberg:
Here is the key bit, but the whole story is worth reading. See link.
Indonesian Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa remarked offhandedly on the possibility of tolls.
“We sit along a strategic global energy trade route,” he said at an infrastructure forum. “Yet ships passing through the Malacca Strait, we don’t charge them. I don’t know, is that right or wrong?”
“If it were split three ways between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, it could be quite significant, right?” he said with a smile.
The Malacca Strait — bordered by Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia — is the key trade route for energy and goods between the Indian and Pacific oceans and considered a major economic chokepoint, similar to Hormuz or the Suez and Panama canals.
Trump seen copying WW2 US strategy to blockade China via Malacca Strait and widen war (1)
