Sanctions: Will the Trump Administration Stay the Course?
President Trump made many statements during the campaign regarding actions he plans to take to reverse Obama administration sanctions policies. These included revisiting the agreement to ease sanctions on Iran, rolling back the sanctions program against Russia, and reversing the Obama administration’s policy of easing sanctions on Cuba. However, we believe that reversing course on these policies is much easier said than done.
For example, several of the Obama administration’s sanctions policies – including those involving Iran and Russia – were part of multilateral actions rather than unilateral sanctions programs, so breaking from such agreements will be difficult. Iran and the other parties to the Iran agreement have signaled their unwillingness to renegotiate, and the EU is unlikely to reverse sanctions against Russia without a change in Russian policy regarding Crimea. Additionally, recent concerns regarding alleged Russian hacking have led to bipartisan support from Congress to block any scaling back of sanctions on Russia.
Originally published in Financial Markets Association on March 20, 2017.
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