Trump’s Sanctions Are Losing Their Bite
Overuse is threatening the effectiveness of a potent economic weapon.
A half-century of sanctions later, they’re still on the road.
Photographer: Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images
In his three years in office, President Donald Trump has placed more people under sanctions than he has insulted on Twitter. But his ready resort to economic punishment has put ever greater strain on a bureaucracy that was overburdened even before he took office — and the more overloaded the sanctions machinery becomes, the less effective it is.
For the third year running, the Trump administration has added more names than any of its predecessors to the Specially Designated Nationals List maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which administers and enforces more than 30 active programs of economic and trade sanctions. On average, Trump has made more than 1,000 designations each year — more than twice the annual average increase in the last two administrations.