Global Times reported yesterday that the newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Japan George Edward Glass, an investment banker and real estate mogul, began his tour in Japan on April 18 with a blast on China. Speaking to journalists at the Tokyo airport, Glass said: “We sit with Japan in a very tough neighbourhood. You have Russia, you have China, and you have North Korea,” claiming that the allies needed to “push back against a country like China.”
This is nothing new for Glass, who was Trump’s Ambassador to Portugal in the first Trump term. He spent his time there denouncing China, ordering the Portuguese government not to use Huawei, and not to hire China to expand the port of Sines or buy an energy company, under threat of sanctions. Portugal’s Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva reacted to these remarks by asserting that “in Portugal, the decision-makers are the Portuguese authorities, who decide which are Portugal’s interests, within the framework of the Constitution and Portuguese law,” and a similar message underscoring national autonomy was issued by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
