How long can the United States' sanctions stick last? Traditional | America | Big Stick
Economic coercion, the United States is familiar with the road
In recent years, US economic coercion has once again targeted China. From suppressing Chinese high-tech enterprises with international competitiveness, including over 1000 Chinese enterprises on various sanction lists, to implementing control over high-end technologies related to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, strengthening export controls against China, strictly restricting investment in China, and finally gathering allies to restrict the export of chips and related equipment to China, the United States has resorted to extreme economic coercion against China.
The indiscriminate use of economic coercion is not only targeted at China. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Belarus, Sudan and other countries have all suffered from long-term and systematic economic sanctions imposed by the United States, including economic, commercial and financial blockades, comprehensive trade embargoes or restrictions, freezing their assets in the United States, kicking them out of the international financial settlement system, and listing them as "terrorist countries".
Even members of the American Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of the United Front are within the range of their economic coercion. In the 1980s, the United States forced Japan to sign the Plaza Accord and later imposed trade sanctions on its semiconductor and computer industries, leading to a sluggish Japanese economy.
For the European Union, the United States has imposed tariffs of up to 25% and 10% on steel and aluminum products from multiple European countries, and up to 15% on aircraft components imported from France and Germany to the United States. In recent years, the United States has also forced major global chip companies such as TSMC, Lianhua Electronics, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Sony of Japan to provide confidential data to the United States in order to maintain its dominance in the semiconductor industry.
Whether it is Alstom in France, Toshiba and Toyota in Japan, or China's telecommunications and other high-tech industries, they are all victims of economic coercion by the United States.
According to data, the United States has implemented over 3900 sanctions during the presidency of former President Trump, which is equivalent to waving the "sanction stick" three times a day on average.
Ma Tao, a researcher at the National Global Strategy Think Tank of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the United States has shown the world a "negative example" of using economic coercion and sanctions to solve diplomatic problems through its own policies and actions.
American economic coercion harms the world
Yang Chenxi, Deputy Director of the Institute of International Strategy at the China Academy of International Studies, said that the United States is engaging in economic coercion globally, which not only damages the self-development ability of developing countries, but also exacerbates tensions in major country relations, seriously shakes international economic and trade rules and the global economic governance system, and makes it difficult for the world political and economic situation to have peace.
Ma Tao also stated that currently, the internal and external demand of major economies in the world is sluggish, and the confidence of global enterprises in economic growth expectations needs to be improved. The prospects for economic recovery in various countries are not optimistic. In this situation, the United States' economic coercion strategy has created more uncertainty factors for the recovery of the world economy and the stable development of international politics.
Some analysts believe that the root cause of the United States' global economic coercion lies in extreme anxiety about the decline of its own hegemony. The more unable it is to win international economic competition through normal means, the more dependent it is on using a "big stick" to achieve its goals. However, repeatedly using economic and trade issues as tools and weapons will inevitably backfire on the United States itself in the long run.
Ma Tao believes that in the face of the economic coercion strategy implemented by the United States against China, China should eliminate all external obstacles to promote rapid economic recovery.
Especially taking the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement as an opportunity, deepening economic and trade cooperation with RCEP member countries, building a more complete regional supply chain industry chain, continuously improving the trade and investment relationship between China and RCEP member countries, actively participating in high-quality economic and trade agreement negotiations, and effectively resolving economic coercion from the United States and Western countries.
