[By David Uren]
The rising use of economic coercion is a symptom of an increasingly unstable world that is struggling to contain rise of China and is no longer bound by the institutions established in the wake of World War II.
US President Donald Trump’s scattergun threats of punitive tariffs are a continuation of this trend. The Biden administration redoubled use of export controls to slow the spread of US technology to China. The West coordinated sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, including the appropriation of its foreign exchange reserves. And China has repeatedly used boycotts and regulatory punishments targeting businesses of nations that have displeased it.
US legal firm Gibson Dunn, which tracks the use of economic coercion, says the Biden administration pursued “the most aggressive and far-reaching use of international trade tools of any US administration in history.” The number of individual designations under the US economic sanctions regime more than doubled to 16,400 in the past four years, with 3300 names added just last year.
The United States intensified its financial squeeze on Russia last year, imposing second…
CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM The Maritime Executive HERE
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.