Donald Trump has spent recent weeks bragging about all of the tariff letters he’s sent to international officials, and while most foreign leaders weren’t all pleased to receive bad news from the American president, one was delighted.
In Myanmar, Min Aung Hlaing has been in power since the country’s military coup in 2021 — developments that the Biden administration condemned when it cut off diplomatic ties with the country’s new leadership and imposed new sanctions. Earlier this month, however, the White House sent the military leader a tariff letter, threatening Myanmar with a new 40% trade penalty.
Min Aung Hlaing was, by all accounts, quite pleased — not because of Trump’s threat, but because the correspondence functionally recognized the legitimacy of Myanmar’s ruling junta in an official and diplomatic way.
In fact, the country’s military leader wrote back to Trump, expressing his “sincere appreciation” for the Republican’s letter, commending the American president for his “strong leadership” and praising Trump for guiding the U.S. “toward national prosperity with the spirit of a true patriot.”
He also appeared to celebrate Trump’s decision to gut Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.
Then an interesting thing happened. Reuters reported:
The United States has lifted sanctions designations on several allies of Myanmar’s ruling generals that had been imposed under the former Biden administration. The U.S. Treasury Department announcement on Thursday came two weeks after the head of Myanmar’s ruling junta praised President Donald Trump in a letter and called for an easing of sanctions in a letter responding to a tariff warning.
The reporting has been independently verified by NBC News.
Administration officials haven’t explained why they lifted the sanctions, but they have insisted the decision was unrelated to the nice letter Myanmar’s military leader recently sent to Trump. And maybe that’s true, but the timeline tells quite a story: Maybe this is entirely coincidental, but it’s not as if the White House has earned the benefit of the doubt. Either way, John Sifton, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, called the sanctions move “extremely worrying.” Sifton went on to tell Reuters, “The action suggests a major shift is underway in U.S. policy, which had centered on punitive action against Myanmar’s military regime.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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