What are economic sanctions and how do they work?

admin — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 08:30:00 +0000

By cutting off a nation’s access to resources, finance, and trade, sanctions aim to put economic pressure on the government or leaders to alter their policies.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Economic sanctions are measures imposed on a country, group, or individual to change their attitude or behaviour. They can also be tools of foreign policy used by one country or a group of countries to influence the behaviour of another country. These sanctions involve the restriction of trade, investment, or financial activity with the target nation to pressure that nation to comply with specific demands. They are a common feature in international relations and have been employed by states and international organisations such as the United Nations (UN) to address issues like human rights abuses, territorial disputes, or nuclear proliferation.

When are they used by countries or organisations?

In 1958, the United States imposed sanctions on Cuba during the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista by Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution. Initially started as an arms-only embargo, it later spread to other products. The reason was stated to ensure the granting of improved human rights and freedoms by Cuba’s current government. In international relations, it is in such scenarios that economic sanctions may be used to create external pressure on countries having tumultuous internal affairs.

Sanctions may include the restriction of trade (banning imports and exports), freezing financial assets, limiting access to international banking systems, travel bans, or other measures that restrict economic activity. The underlying logic is simple: By cutting off a nation’s access to resources, finance, and trade, sanctions aim to put economic pressure on the government or leaders to alter their policies.

The mechanisms behind

The success of economic sanctions hinges on their ability to create significant pressure on the targeted nation, compelling it to alter its behaviour. The primary method through which sanctions exert pressure is by causing economic pain. For example, trade restrictions can lead to shortages of goods and services, rising prices, and inflation; even the privileged will not have resources to turn to soon. The country might also be diplomatically isolated, reducing a country’s ability to form alliances and engage in meaningful international relations. This isolation can limit the country’s influence in global affairs, thus weakening its power on the world stage. It can also prevent the country from accessing capital markets, crippling its ability to fund governmental operations and projects.

Apart from these directly impactful sanctions, countries or organisations often put sanctions on a country as a note of disapproval. It is to show that certain actions or behaviours are not acceptable to the international community.

Is it right, though?

A big question that looms over the international community is whether economic sanctions are actually ethical. Will the administration or the common people be the actual sufferers under such pressure?

This is one of the most significant criticisms faced by sanctions. Comprehensive sanctions, in particular, can lead to shortages of food, medicine, and essential services, resulting in humanitarian crises. This can turn the international community’s efforts to punish a regime into a punishment for the population.

Additionally, the imposition of sanctions can lead to unintended consequences, such as pushing a target country closer to other adversarial nations, like China or Russia, for support. It may also lead to the rallying of internal power to hold onto their administration. For example, in countries like North Korea, sanctions seem to have helped in increasing the State’s power over its citizens.

Published – November 29, 2025 02:00 pm IST

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Kamala Harris bets her policies can attract Latino voters while Trump touts his time as President to them

admin — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 16:38:05 +0000

Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump see economic policy as their best chance to win Latino voters. But their approaches are very different.

In an interview with Telemundo on Tuesday afternoon, Vice-President Harris plans to highlight how her agenda would create more opportunities for Latino men — a strategy born out of roughly a dozen focus groups and polling.

The Democratic nominee intends to show off her plans to double the number of registered apprenticeships. She wants to stress how she would remove college degree requirements for certain federal government jobs and encourage private employers to do likewise. And Ms. Harris wants to provide forgivable loans worth up to $20,000 each to 1 million small businesses.

Former President Trump, the Republican nominee, is making his own outreach to Latinos on Tuesday by holding a roundtable with them in Doral, a Miami suburb.

His campaign says he will make the case that employment, wages and home ownership increased for Latinos during his time in office. The campaign also says he will argue that Ms. Harris and President Joe Biden stuck Latinos with high inflation and that “Trump is the only candidate who can bring prosperity back to America.”

The Trump and Harris campaigns see what could be an election-deciding opportunity with Latino men, who could swing the outcome in states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada if their traditional support for Democrats erodes. Trump believes he’s made inroads among Latino men. Harris’ team is seeking to shore up support within the same group with the election just two weeks away.

It sets up a question of whether memories of a Trump presidency or the promise of new policies under Harris will do more to energize Latino voters.

”We are very confident that these policies resonate because we’ve seen them resonate in speeches and focus groups,” said Matt Barreto, a Harris campaign pollster. “It speaks to Latino men in particular about being successful and achieving the American dream.”

Both campaigns are jockeying for an edge with the increasingly diverse electorate in the closing weeks of the campaign. Harris has also focused on Black men, to whom she also pitched the forgivable loans for small businesses. She’s gone on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” to appeal to younger women, while Trump has appeared on podcasts to target younger men.

Trump participated in a town hall last week on Univision where his major pitch to Latinos was that the economy had been phenomenal during his White House term.

“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump said. “Now we have a lousy economy primarily because of inflation. So we’re going to get rid of the inflation.”

The former president’s description of his own economic record typically excludes the mass job losses and recession caused by the pandemic in 2020. Inflation is now at a relatively healthy 2.4%, but frustration still lingers for voters from inflation spiking in June 2022 at 9.1% as gasoline, groceries and housing became much more expensive.

On Univision, Trump said increased oil production would bring down overall inflation if he was elected. He has also suggested his combination of tariff hikes and tax cuts will help growth, though his campaign lacks details compared to the policy guide released by Harris’ team.

In a close race, the Harris campaign is betting that Latino men are getting more attuned to policy specifics as the election draws closer.

Based on focus groups, Barreto said the Harris campaign found that Latino men in particular wanted access to apprenticeships that could give people without college degrees access to a financially stable career.

The latest Labor Department figures show there are 641,044 registered apprenticeships, an increase from the Trump administration, when apprenticeships peaked in 2020 at 569,311. Doubling that figure as Harris has proposed would put the total number of apprenticeships at roughly 1.2 million over four years.

Latino men also expressed a need for access to capital and credit to start companies, as the Treasury Department reported on Oct. 10 that Latino business ownership is up 40% over pre-pandemic levels and could keep climbing with better financing options.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will be on Univision’s El Bueno, La Mala, y El Feo, a syndicated radio show, this week, while Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, will be interviewed this week by Univision’s nationally syndicated afternoon radio show, El Free-Guey Show. Emhoff will also be interviewed by Alex “El Genio” Lucas on Nueva Network Radio.

Trump hopes to convince Latinos that they can trust a fellow businessman such as himself, even as he’s also called for the mass deportation of immigrants in the country illegally.

“Hispanic people — they say you can’t generalize, but I think you can — they have wonderful entrepreneurship and they have — oh, do you have such energy. Just ease up a little bit, OK? Ease up,” Trump said at an Oct. 12 event. “You have great ambition, you have great energy, very smart, and you really do like natural entrepreneurs.”