The American Conservative:

By Barbara Slavin

Pulling back from the brink of a military strike on Iran last week, President Donald Trump announced yet more sanctions on Monday as punishment for the Islamic Republic’s downing of an expensive American drone.

Sanctions—and tariffs—have become the non-military tools of choice for the Trump administration, which has embarked on “maximum pressure” economic campaigns against at least three other nations—North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba—with additional sanctions on Russia, a trade war with China, and threats of higher tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, Japan, and even the European Union.

So far, these measures have produced no great new “deals.” A modest update of the North American Free Trade Agreement is being harshly criticized by American labor interests and may not achieve ratification in a divided Congress. It is also not clear whether protracted talks with China will succeed at all.

What has occurred, however, is the steady impoverishment of people in countries that have been sanctioned.

A failed and poorly planned U.S. effort at regime change in Venezuela, combined with American sanctions on that country’s oil exports, has contributed to a humanitarian disaster in our own hemisphere. Some four million of the country’s 30 million people have fled and another one million may leave this year. Health care, food supplies, and electricity are intermittent and often out of reach for ordinary Venezuelans. One recent study estimates that there have been 40,000 additional deaths in the country from 2017 to 2018 because of U.S. sanctions. Meanwhile, the regime of Nicolás Maduro remains defiantly in power.

In North Korea—a country where as many as two million people died of famine two decades ago—the UN reports that 10 million are facing severe food shortages because of a poor harvest impacted by climate change. Despite yet another exchange of “love” letters between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and talk of a third summit between them, the North appears no closer to relinquishing its nuclear and missile arsenals, slowing its accumulation of fissile material and even producing a roster of its own weapons.

The impact of U.S. sanctions on Iran and Cuba has been particularly cruel, since during the Obama administration people in both countries had their expectations raised for a better life.

Go to link