embargo

With Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (left) by his side, U.S. President Donald Trump oversees the signing of a ceasefire agreement between Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul (second from right) and Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet (right) on the sidelines of the 47th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Sunday, October 26, 2025. File Photo via The White House/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 6 (UPI) — The United States on Thursday lifted a Biden-era arms embargo on Cambodia following several high-profile meetings between officials of both countries.

The notice filed by the State Department with the Federal Register that explains the Trump administration was removing Cambodia from the International Traffic in Arms Regulations list due to Phnom Penh’s “diligent pursuit of peace and security, including through renewed engagement with the United States on defense cooperation and combating transnational crime.”

The embargo was placed on Cambodia in late 2021 by the Biden administration to address human rights abuses, corruption by Cambodian government actors, including in the military, and the growing influence of China in the country.

It was unclear if any of those issues had been addressed.

“The Trump administration has completely upended U.S. policy toward Cambodia with no regard for U.S. national security or our values,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., said in a statement criticizing the move to lift the embargo.

“There has been broad bipartisan concern about the Cambodian government’s human rights abuses and its deepening ties to Beijing.”

The embargo was lifted on the heels of Deputy Prime Minister Prak Sokhonn meeting with Michael George DeSombre, U.S. assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, in Cambodia on Tuesday.

On Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth met with Tea Seiha, another Cambodian deputy prime minister, in Malaysia, where the two agreed to restart “our premier bilateral military exercise,” the Pentagon chief said in a statement.

President Donald Trump has received much praise from Cambodia for his involvement in securing late July’s cease-fire and then last month’s peace declaration between Thailand and Cambodia, which had been involved in renewed armed conflict in their long-running border dispute.

During Tuesday’s meeting between Prak and DeSombre, the Cambodian official reiterated Phnom Penh’s “deep gratitude” to Trump “for his crucial role in facilitating” the agreements, according to a Cambodian Foreign Ministry statement on the talks.

Meeks framed the lifting of the embargo on Thursday as the Trump administration turning a blind eye to Cambodia’s “rampant corruption and repression … because the Cambodian government placated Trump in his campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize.”

“That’s not how American foreign policy or our arms sales process is meant to work,” Meeks said.

Cambodia in August nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize “in recognition of his historic contributions in advancing world peace,” the letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee stated.

Soybean farmers, such as the owners of the soybean field pictured in rural Iowa in 2019, may be in line for federal subsidies as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China. File Photo by Mike Theiler/UPI. | License Photo

Oct. 5 (UPI) — Soybean farmers could be the recipients of between $10 billion and $14 billion in government aid after China’s unofficial embargo tanked sales.

China stopped buying soybeans after President Donald Trump levied tariffs on the country.

Soybean farmers are urging the president to reach a deal with China.

“China is the world’s largest soybean customer and typically our top export market,” said American Soybean Association president Caleb Ragland in a statement on Sept. 24 after China reportedly bought 20 shiploads of soybeans from Argentina when that country said it would waive all taxes on soybean exports.

“The U.S. has made zero sales to China in this new crop marketing year due to 20% retaliatory tariffs imposed by China in response to U.S. tariffs. This has allowed other exporters — Brazil and now Argentina — to capture our market at the direct expense of U.S. farmers. The frustration is overwhelming,” Ragland said.

China was responsible for about $12 billion in soybean sales in 2024, NBC reported.

“The soybean farmers of our country are being hurt because China is, for ‘negotiating’ reasons only, not buying. We’ve made so much money on tariffs that we are going to take a small portion of that money and help our farmers,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Rally is held as British PM Keir Starmer calls Israel’s actions ‘intolerable’, addressing lawmakers in Parliament.

Pro-Palestine campaigners have rallied against Israel’s punishing war on Gaza, gathering outside the British Parliament in London and demanding a full arms embargo and that hard-hitting sanctions be imposed on the Israeli government.

Wednesday’s march, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), came as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer took weekly questions from parliamentarians.

Thousands of protesters created a “Red Line for Palestine”, wearing red while encircling the building.

Starmer told Parliament that Israel’s actions in the besieged and bombarded enclave are “appalling” and “intolerable”.

“It is right to describe these days as dark,” Starmer said. “We have strongly opposed the expansion of Israeli military operations, and settler violence, and the blocking of humanitarian aid.”

Starmer added that the UK has imposed sanctions, suspended free trade negotiations, and is currently considering further sanctions.

But the UK leader, his Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and his government have come under heavy criticism in the UK for not speaking more forcefully backed by actual action earlier in the war, and for not doing enough now as Palestinians face what United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called the “cruellest phase of this cruel conflict”.

Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from London, said the protest went on for several hours and throughout Starmer’s entire speech to Parliament.

 

“There was a red line around the whole of Parliament,” Challands said.

“These protesters had formed a cordon, essentially all the way down from Parliament to the first bridge … that goes across to the other side of the [River] Thames, and they came back up … and returned over Westminster Bridge to join up here to make a full loop,” he added.

According to Challands, protesters say that their “red line” is to show that the UK government should have its own red lines when it comes to Gaza.

It has not had “sufficient” red lines in place, he said. “The protesters say there should have been red lines before 54,000 deaths.”

In his remarks, Starmer also called for an end to the siege and said humanitarian aid must reach Gaza quickly and in the required quantities.

Israel has maintained a crippling blockade on the territory, barring the entry of much-needed aid, including food, medicine, clean water, and fuel required by generators. A famine now looms as more than two million people are facing starvation, the UN has warned.

Meanwhile, a controversial, United States-backed group that runs aid distribution points in Gaza – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – has suspended operations for a full day. The move came after Israeli forces opened fire at hungry aid seekers several times, killing dozens of Palestinians and injuring hundreds more since the organisation started operating in the enclave on May 27.

The killing of people desperately seeking food supplies has triggered mounting international outrage as many say aid is being weaponised and with the UN’s Guterres demanding an independent inquiry.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 54,607 Palestinians and wounded 125,341, according to the Health Ministry.

In 2015, as a civil war was raging in South Sudan, the United Nations Security Council imposed the first set of sanctions on the country, including asset freezes and travel bans on various senior officials. Three years later, after a ceasefire agreement was repeatedly violated, the UNSC mustered the votes to impose a full arms embargo. Fragile peace eventually settled in, but the embargo was kept in place and was extended every year.

The review of the embargo is now coming up on May 29 and there is a push from African members of the UNSC – Sierra Leone, Somalia and Algeria – to lift it. On March 18, the African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) publicly called for this measure to end.

But lifting the embargo on South Sudan at this moment would be a mistake. Violence has come back to plague the country, killing at least 180 people between March and mid-April, amid deepening divisions between President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar, who has been placed under house arrest.

Allowing more weapons to enter the country would only escalate the dire situation. This would not be in the interest of neighbouring countries and the African Union as a whole.

Under the AU’s development plan, Agenda 2063, the continent set itself an ambitious goal of “Silencing the Guns” by 2020, later extended to 2030. With this, the AU wants to “end all wars and violent conflicts and promote dialogue-based mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution”.

Yet, the AUPSC’s call for lifting the embargo on South Sudan does not fall in line with these goals. The justification for this stance is that free access to more weapons can enable the unification of government and opposition forces and reform the security sector.

But this logic ignores the growing fractures in South Sudan amid the renewed tensions between Kiir and Machar. Placing more guns in the hands of warring parties involved in serious human rights violations and crimes under international law would only make the situation worse.

South Sudan’s security and defence forces have attacked the very people they are tasked to protect: Civilians. The South Sudanese army, National Security Service and armed opposition forces have been implicated in war crimes and human rights violations for well more than a decade, including by the AU’s Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan and the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan.

Indeed, around the time the AUPSC called for the lifting of the arms embargo, South Sudan’s government reportedly used improvised incendiary weapons in aerial attacks, killing at least 58 people and injuring others, including children.

To be sure, the existence of the arms embargo is not enough – its enforcement is key. That is already faltering after in early March, Uganda sent troops and military equipment to South Sudan without providing notification or receiving special exemption from the UNSC Sanctions Committee. This is a clear violation of the embargo.

South Sudan’s Mi-24 helicopters also seem to be on the move, despite the government’s fleet reportedly being non-functional and grounded since the arms embargo was imposed in 2018. This suggests spare parts have been sourced in violation of the embargo.

On May 4, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, reported that two helicopter gunships had bombed its medical facility in Old Fangak the day before and fired at the town, killing seven and injuring 20 others. Deliberate attacks on a medical facility performing its humanitarian function violate international humanitarian law and would constitute a war crime.  This is yet another indication of why the UNSC must renew the arms embargo and strengthen its enforcement.

If properly implemented and enforced, a renewed UNSC arms embargo would not obstruct security sector reform. Instead, it would block the disorderly and destabilising accumulation of arms in South Sudan, which is spurring the current conflict and contributing to violations against civilians.

If the AU is serious about silencing the guns, it should back the strict controls prohibiting arms transfers to South Sudan, and the African states in the UNSC should vote to renew the arms embargo.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.