Tag: Economic Warfare

Let’s Try Even More Sanctions

The US is imposing new sanctions on Russia….

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the US has put 250 individuals and entities on blacklists for supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Washington has waged an economic war aimed at destroying the Russian economy for the past 20 months. However, Moscow has largely successfully circumvented the Western financial penalties. 

Blinken said in a statement, “The US is imposing sanctions today on over 250 individuals and entities in connection with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” The statement continued, “The Department of State is imposing sanctions on over 100 entities and individuals, including those engaged in sanctions evasion, furthering Russia’s ability to wage its war against Ukraine, and bolstering Russia’s future energy production and export capacity.”  

The statement added, “Concurrently, the Department of the Treasury is imposing sanctions on over 150 individuals and entities, including multiple networks used by Russia to circumvent sanctions, numerous third-country suppliers to Russia’s military-industrial base, and additional Russian financial institutions.”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/us-issues-hundreds-of-new-sanctions-against-russia/

I have written many times about how sanctions do very little to change things…..in fact there are times when they just help business to boom.

And oil business for Russia is booming after the massive sanctions imposed by the US and its NATO allies….

A Bloomberg analysis of Russian energy exports found Moscow has largely successfully circumvented the Group of 7’s (G7) price cap on Russian oil exports. The Kremlin has found buyers in India and China to replace exports to Europe. Additionally, Moscow has contracted with a group of tankers willing to transport Russian oil despite potential economic penalties.

Bloomberg reports, “Russia’s net oil revenues of $11.3 billion in October accounted for 31% of the nation’s overall net budget revenue for the month, according to Bloomberg calculations that are built around Russian finance ministry data, but smooth out profit-based tax revenue.” The article continues, “That was the highest since May 2022 and exceeded any single month in the year before the invasion of Ukraine, which initially caused huge volatility to the nation’s exports.”

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, President Joe Biden announced the US and its allies would use sanctions to cripple the Russian economy and disable Moscow’s war machine. The Kremlin was able to find trading partners willing to ignore the Western sanctions, such as China, India, and Turkey. 

As the economic war failed to deliver a blow to the Russian economy during the first year of the war, in December 2022, Washington and its allies in the G7 imposed a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil exports. However, Moscow has effectively evaded the economic penalties by shipping its oil via a fleet of tankers that operate outside of Western enforcement mechanisms. 

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/russian-oil-revenue-higher-in-october-than-any-month-in-2021/

Sanctions are nothing more than a feel good solution that accomplishes very little to nothing.

But that is okay as long as the ‘leaders’ can go before a camera and convince the weak mind that they are doing damage to the opposition….

Like I said feel good at best and makes for great news fodder for the evening news.

Maybe we should impose more sanctions.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Sanctions And Tariffs

Sanctions have been used as economic warfare for centuries…and in reality hurts NO one but the average person and consumer…..then a new president and a new way of economic warfare….Tariffs.

This president has two tools in his economic bag of tricks…..yep you guessed it….sanctions and tariffs.

I have studied 18th century economist Henry George and he has lots to say on tariffs…..

American economist Henry George is best known for his 1879 treatise Progress and Poverty, for which Albert Einstein designated George a “beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic forum, and fervent love of justice” (George 1879, cover). Progress and Poverty became a huge success, and in 1886 George followed up with a far more obscure — but perhaps more significant — work on the nature of free trade as pertaining to the eradication of poverty: Protection or Free Trade: An Examination of the Tariff Question, With Especial Regard to the Interests of Labor (online at the Mises Institute).

The problem identified by Henry George, in Protection or Free Trade, is that of poverty, and more specifically, wages and unemployment. What follows from that is George’s systematic and all-embracing dissertation of the effects that protectionist and free-trade policies have on the wealth of a nation and its individuals. Naturally, he arrives at a conclusion that is decidedly in favor of free trade — as opposed to protective prescriptions — as a surefire solution to the ills of poverty.

https://mises.org/library/henry-george-and-tariff-question

Then there are sanctions…..and I have covered gthe problems with sanctions in previous post…..https://lobotero.com/2019/02/05/sanctions/

But if you prefer…..I have Henry Goerge’s thoughts on trade sanctions……

The American free trader Henry George (1839-1897) argued that trade sanctions against “our enemies” hurt domestic domestic consumers just like any other “protectionist” trade restriction:

Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/500

Sanctions and tariffs are a lazy person’s answers to any trade problems…..they are NOT solutions at all.

And now my cheese and wine will be much more expensive…….

The Trump administration plans to impose tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of European imports—from gouda cheese to single-malt whiskey to large aircraft—beginning Oct. 18 to retaliate against illegal European Union subsidies for aviation giant Airbus. The latest escalation in the administration’s tariffs will open a new chapter in the trade wars that are heightening fears of a global recession, the AP reports. The administration received a green light for its latest import taxes Wednesday from the World Trade Organization, which ruled that the US could impose the tariffs as retaliation for illegal aid that the 28-country EU gave to Airbus in its competition with its American rival Boeing.

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