Who are the losers from U.S. sanctions? American companies.
Two giant U.S. business groups – the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers – ran ads in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post protesting sanctions against Russia [7]. These are not do-good political groups … they are conservative, hard-nosed pro-business groups.
The New York Times reports [8] today:
American business groups have objected to unilateral sanctions, arguing that they would only hurt domestic businesses while their European competitors swooped in.
The National Association of Manufacturers said it “is disappointed that the U.S. is fundamentally extending sanctions in increasingly unilateral ways that will undermine U.S. commercial engagement and reduce the effectiveness of the measures imposed.”
Zero Hedge notes [9] that the sanctions don’t seem to have hurt Russia much:
[The U.S. has] underperformed Russia by almost 20% since unleashing the first set of sanctions and sell recommendations ….
[10]
U.S. News and World Report pointed out [11] in April:
Sanctioning Russia’s energy sector is a bad idea that will only marginally hurt Russia ….
Russia is the world’s third largest oil producer [12], and U.S. or E.U. sanctions against Russia will dramatically lower the global supply, thus raising global prices.
Bloomberg also reports [13] that American power plants are “desperately” turning to Russia for their coal.
And sanctioning Russia has also pushed Russia to bypass US-controlled oil and gas systems [14] altogether, and pushed Russia, China and Iran [15] closer together [16].
The Wall Street Journal reports that – according to a new study – sanctions against Iran cost the U.S. as much as $175.3 billion [17] in lost export opportunities over 18 years
In other words, by demonizing countries instead of peacefully trading with them, the U.S. is shooting itself in the foot economically.
This is not an isolated problem …
Ron Paul says that sanctions against Russia [18] and Iran [19] are acts of war [20]. Some analysis agree and others disagree.
But it has become clear that hawkish, imperialistic policies no longer benefit the American economy:
- We’ve thoroughly documented that war is horrible for the American economy [21], and benefits only a handful of bankers [22] and defense contractors [23] (but as a former high-level Bush administration says, an oligarchy controls [24] U.S. defense policy)
- Similarly, NSA’s mass surveillance is destroying the economy [25] … but making a handful of people rich [26]