25 June 1997
USA Today, Our View

Using trade as weapon gains popularity, backfires

Efforts by Christian conservatives and labor liberals to break normal trade relations with China failed Tuesday in the House, ending for another year Washington's annual saber rattling over China.

If only other countries were as lucky. While sanctions and threats of them against high-profile nations like Iraq, Iran, Cuba and China grab headlines, Congress and the Clinton administration both have been busy finding other targets.

In recent weeks, Myanmar, formerly Burma, earned a U.S. trade embargo for human rights transgressions; India suffered sanctions for missile building; and Croatia was punished for failing to pursue Bosnian war criminals. They join a list of more than 60 nations - among them Poland, Italy, Brazil and Canada - that have suffered some U.S. economic reprisals in the past three years for human rights, drug dealing, terrorism, labor abuses, democratic failings or environmental violations. Meanwhile, state and local governments are busily applying sanctions of their own.

The assortment of nations and abundance of causes contrast sharply with the 45-year Cold War period, during which the U.S. imposed sanctions 79 times, mostly for national security. The new sanctions have upset allies and angered U.S. businesses, too, with little to show in return.

U.S. bans on nuclear power plant sales to China cost Westinghouse a multibillion contract that supported 3,500 U.S. jobs. And the Burma sanctions wiped out Unocol's $600 million Thai-Burmese pipeline.

Overall, the U.S. is losing $15 billion to $20 billion in exports and 250,000 high-paying export jobs a year due to sanctions, a study by the nonpartisan Institute for International Economics found.

That price can be cheap when sanctions work, as they did in South Africa. Or when the only other options are war, as in Iraq, or standing idly by as U.S. interests are threatened, as in Iran. But thoughtless proliferation of sanctions to provide Congress cheap, politically appealing votes backfires.

That's particularly true when we aren't supported by other nations. Unilateral sanctions often only let foreign competitors ship the grain or build the pipelines U.S. businesses would have.

Worse, most repressive regimes don't care about their own people. Sanctions failed to oust thugs in Haiti and Panama. But they helped to devastate the people.

The lesson from all this:

Economic sanctions are best applied with other nations, not alone. They need proper tailoring so they hit those intended, with as little fallout as possible for those the U.S. intends to aid. Most of all, they need to serve a purpose other than to feel good and be constantly checked for their effect.

Sanctions don't make much sense if their only impact is to impoverish people and shoot down American businesses and jobs.

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