Economic Sanctions

Economic sanctions are the tools the United States government uses to pressure foreign governments, organizations, and individuals without resorting to military force. They can freeze assets, block trade, restrict travel, or cut a target off from the American financial system, and they sit alongside tariffs and export controls as part of a broader set of economic pressure tactics used in foreign policy.

How sanctions actually function depends on who issues them, what authority backs them, and how narrowly or broadly they’re targeted. A look at How U.S. Economic Sanctions Work: Tools, Targets, and Trade-offs lays out the mechanics: which agencies administer sanctions programs, how targets are chosen, and what compliance requires of American businesses and banks.

Whether sanctions achieve their goals is a long-running debate among policymakers and researchers. Sanctions can cripple a targeted economy while leaving a regime’s leadership untouched, or they can backfire by hurting American exporters and allies more than the intended target. Do Economic Sanctions Work? walks through the conditions under which economic pressure tends to succeed or fail.

Terminology matters here, since sanctions, embargoes, and tariffs get used loosely in everyday conversation but carry distinct legal meanings and effects, a distinction covered in The Differences Between Sanctions and Embargoes. Related restrictions also reach ordinary commerce: the government maintains lists of people and companies that American businesses are legally barred from dealing with, as explained in The Denied Persons List: Who You Can’t Do Business With.