Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
Okey dokey.

So my proposition is that you can get the best of both worlds.

You can get successful punitive sanctions by effecting the foreign nations trade in a significant way.

You can effect domestic trade in a positive way by using trade sanctions against foreign countries.

At first nobody would believe it works, but once enacted they become very hard to reverse due to domestic pressures. By reducing or favoring trade with third parties you can drastically impact trade balances of entities that don't even trade with the United States.

Some criticisms I think of my ideas is that it is gerrymandering the economy and is not laise faire capitalism though I think the last nail is in that coffin.

I guess my guiding principle is that for punitive sanctions to work they need to be positive to domestic needs. My example is Cuban sanctions where everybody else trades with them their nearest neighbor not doing so is basically an inconvenience. There is no domestic component so even our political machinery is at odds with the policy. Think it out a bit better and sanctions could be fairly effective if others wanted to trade with us more than them.
Selil, I can not argue with your premise that trade sanctions can be used to influence other countries' behavior. That would be true diplomacy and not political grandstanding. Unfortunately my belief in the government’s ability to make that transition is limited, and I would favor taking away the broken tool of punitive sanctions from the toolbox. Perhaps if we take out the broken tools, they will learn how to use the tools that do work.
Reed