Have there been any attempts by the rest of the world to sanction the US in the last years?

Question

In the past few years the US has implemented or rejected certain international policies which other countries have been critical of. The first that come to mind are:

1. The Paris climate accord - the US is the only country that has rejected the global pact.
2. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - the other signatories were all critical of the decision to withdraw.

I'm wondering if there've been any attempts by the rest of the world to sanction the US for its behavior.

Answer 1

For the proximate causes you state? No. Sanctions are very serious escalation moves between states and very few, perhaps no developed country, would risk an escalating sanction regime with the US and certainly not over global warming or the US pulling out of the JCPA.

For example, Russia imposed sanctions on the US, Canada, and Australia in response to sanctions Russia received after the Ukraine war in 2014.

Also China has sanctioned some US firms based upon defense spending/business in Taiwan in July of 2019.

And most recently Iran imposed sanctions on U.S. National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin, and American senator Ted Cruz, from travelling to Iran.

Answer 2

According to Wikipedia sanctions are:

Coercive measures adopted by a country or a group of countries against another state or individual(s) in order to elicit a change in their behavior.

An example, which may fit under the above definition, is the 2011 EU export ban for substances, which can be used as a lethal injection drug for carrying out the death penalty.

I would argue we may count this as a sanction, because:

• It clearly is a politically motivated move to elicit a change in behavior.
• While as a global export ban not solely limited to the US, it was at that time widely perceived to explicitly target the US (see linked press articles).
• It also seemed to have been at least partially effective in achieving its goal, as it caused delays and major disturbances in carrying out the death penalty and to a certain extent also caused a new public debate in the US. So it definitely doesn't fall in the same category of symbolic/retaliatory sanctions as "Iran's sanctions against the US".

---

Some further reading:

America is running out of lethal injection drugs because of a European embargo to end the death penalty - The Independent, 13 March 2015

Can Europe End the Death Penalty in America? - The Atlantic, 18 February 2014

Answer 3

In practice, it is very difficult for western-style democracies to impose sanctions on each other. First and foremost, they are all close allies, and secondly their economies are so intertwined. When disagreements arise over policy decisions, they usually take the form of import bans or tariffs. For example, Canada and Japan (have/had?) import bans on US beef and dairy products. Some European countries (notably France) ban imports of genetically modified corn from the US. The US has threatened tariffs on Mexico over immigration policy. That sort of thing.

When it comes to non-friendly countries, they sanction each other all the time. China has sanctions against some US technology firms over the sale of defense technology to Taiwan. North Korea has blanket sanctions on the US including a travel ban for US citizens. Iran and Russia similarly have sanctions against the US.

The difference is that the countries sanctioning each other usually have reciprocal animosity, and western-style democracies have much larger economies that are not as disaffected by sanctions being imposed on them. The net result is that sanctions are not an effective tool against them. And with the US in particular, it is the world's largest economy by a pretty wide margin, so a country cutting itself off from that does so mostly at their own expense.