President Trump’s threatened tariffs on countries that buy oil from Venezuela are another example of how his trade moves could hit China the hardest even when China is not named as the target.joganh0

Mr. Trump announced the 25 percent “secondary tariffs” last week, portraying them as aimed at the authoritarian government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and at the country’s Tren de Aragua gang. The Venezuelan-related tariffs could still be imposed on top of the very steep tariffs that Mr. Trump declared on Wednesday, which bring his new tariffs on Chinese goods to 54 percent.

“It was a disaster,” recalled Roula Katselou, 50, a resident of Exambela, one of the largest villages on the island. “We could not shower, cook or clean. We had to carry buckets of water from our neighbors who had cisterns and buy bottled water to wash the children.”

Dr. Swierk wasn’t sure whether the adaptation was a function of survival or just a strange side effect of their hydrophobic skin. While water can’t stick to a lizard’s skin, its composition allows air bubbles to form around parts of its body.

baixopg

The biggest buyer of Venezuela’s oil is China — and China is the country least able to stop buying oil from Venezuela.

Venezuela owes about $10 billion to China’s state-run banks,7jogos according to AidData, a research institute at William and Mary, a university in Williamsburg, Va., that compiles information about Chinese development financing.

China’s banks need their loans to Venezuela to be repaid. They already face heavy losses on real estate lending at home. On Monday, China’s Ministry of Finance said it would sell about $70 billion worth of bonds to shore up the country’s four largest commercial banks.

But after more than a decade of economic mismanagement, Venezuela has almost no legal exports except oil to raise the money it needs to keep paying its debts to China.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.joganh0