Trump set record sanctions use that Biden is likely to maintain

Bloomberg

The Trump administration has imposed sanctions at a record-shattering pace of about three times a day during the president’s time in office: a slew of measures targeting companies, individuals and even oil tankers tied to Iran, North Korea, China, Venezuela and Russia.
President-elect Joe Biden’s team is promising a top-to-bottom review of sanctions operations, but don’t expect a significant slowdown on his watch.
About seven weeks before the inauguration, Biden’s picks for top administration slots are making clear that economic restrictions on countries will remain an essential tool, even if they don’t like everything about the way Trump used them.
Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, chosen by Biden to be the No. 2 official at Treasury, plans to review how the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) unit, at Treasury operates, people familiar with the matter said. That includes an evaluation of current programs, staffing and budgets, according to the people. Yet the conviction that sanctions remain crucial underscores just how central they have become to the way the US conducts foreign policy, using its economic might as much as its military power to get what it wants abroad, even when close
allies disagree.
And as much as Biden wants to distance himself from Trump’s policies, experts and observers say he is likely to keep up Trump’s aggressive approach.
In their determination to push through an “America First” approach to geopolitical crises, Trump’s team innovated new forms of economic coercion, melding run-of-the-mill sanctions designations with tariffs, export controls and secondary sanctions to punish friends and enemies alike.
“They’ve used these tools, tariffs, export controls as a one-two-three punch going after folks like China and others,” said Adam Smith, a former senior adviser in the Treasury Department’s sanctions unit and now a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Ignoring the warning that China’s economy was too big, and too closely intertwined with America’s, Trump repeatedly sanctioned Chinese officials and firms, including 14 top legislators. He blew past warnings that unilateral sanctions against Iran would be ineffective, crippling that country’s economy, without the help of European partners.
Under Trump, the administration took more than 3,900 distinct sanctions actions, according to data collected by Gibson Dunn, with a surge in 2018, when the administration reintroduced many Iran penalties after it pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal backed by allies including the UK, France and Germany. No previous administration had exceeded 700 sanctions actions a year.
Biden’s team, wary of showing its cards before taking office, has been vague about which of Trump’s sanctions it will keep or lift, though the president-elect called for returning to the Iran nuclear deal.

In a CNN article in September, however, Biden said his administration would “continue the use of targeted sanctions against Iran’s human rights abuses, its support for terrorism and ballistic missile program.”
“We must also remain laser-focused on the Treasury Department’s critical role protecting our national security,” Adeyemo said when his nomination was announced Dec. 1. “This includes using our sanctions regime to hold bad actors accountable.”
One challenge Biden will face is that U.S. sanctions have now become so sprawling and complicated that they’re more difficult to enforce or manage without risking serious blowback on the American economy.

US sanctions North Korean coal sales
Bloomberg

The US announced new sanctions on entities and ships it says are helping North Korea sell coal in violation of
international restrictions meant to reign in Kim Jong-un’s nuclear weapons program.
The Treasury Department said it was sanctioning six entities, including China-based Weihai Huijiang Trade as Always Smooth and Good Siblings, which are registered in the UK Hong Kong-based Silver Bridge Shipping Co-HKG, Korea Daizin Trading Corporation and Thinh Cuong Co were also targeted.
The US identified four vessels related to the transport of North Korean coal, and called on Chinese authorities to “implement and enforce” UN resolutions by taking action against “companies, individuals and vessels that engage in” sanctions busting.