•Press Release Globalization and Trade Sanctions US Foreign Policy
Washington, DC — The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) is launching a new “Sanctions Watch” bulletin that will provide periodic updates on US and other Western economic sanctions against countries such as Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. The CEPR Sanctions Watch is designed to inform subscribers about new sanctions, changes in existing sanctions, and news related to the humanitarian impacts of various Western sanctions regimes designed to pressure target countries into making certain political changes.
US sanctions have increasingly become a go-to foreign policy tool in recent years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, even though they are often illegal under international law. US economic sanctions against Venezuela began under the Obama administration, were expanded under Trump, and have continued under Biden. Likewise, while the Obama administration successfully negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iran nuclear deal, that lifted sanctions on Iran, the US exited the deal under the Trump administration and reapplied economic pressure that has, so far, carried on into the Biden era.
The inaugural bulletin includes new developments that have received little attention in the major media, including September 11 families calling for the Afghanistan central bank’s reserve assets to be returned to Afghanistan, the ongoing failure of the Biden administration to return to the Obama-era Cuba policy, how sanctions on Iran are worsening the humanitarian situation there, the wider economic fallout of Western sanctions on Russia, and more. The CEPR Sanctions Watch will be available through Substack and readers can subscribe to it here. CEPR’s reports, fact sheets, op-eds, blog posts, and other work related to economic sanctions can be found here.
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