Barbara Kotschwar and Gary Clyde Hufbauer
The
Peterson Institute for International Economics is a private, nonprofit,
nonpartisan
The Obama
administration imposed new sanctions on Venezuela last week, declaring, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, “a national
emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security
and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.”
These sanctions will deny visas and freeze the
assets of officials who the US claims were involved in violent street protests
that killed 43 people in February 2014. The sanctions also target officials who
undermine democratic processes, limit freedom of expression, or engage in
public corruption.
The assertion that the situation reflects a
“national emergency” for the United States is puzzling. Venezuela is a national
security threat only to itself. Years of distorted economic policies have left
Venezuela with a second straight year of negative economic growth and the
world’s highest rate of inflation. Foreign reserves are dwindling—a bizarre
situation for an oil exporter that enjoyed nearly a decade of record high
petroleum prices. A four-tier currency system benefits corrupt insiders but
hurts the poor and middle class. Widely reported are shortages of basic
goods—toilet paper, diapers, baby formula, and medicines among others.
The declaration of a national emergency is a
procedural aspect of most sanctions programs, as a senior administration
official clarified in a conference call. The White House points out that
the sanctions are aimed not at the Venezuelan people but at particular
individuals. Strong US language, however, will certainly add fuel to President
Nicolás Maduro’s anti-American rhetoric and conspiracy claims. In turn,
sanctions will serve as a rallying cry against the Venezuelan opposition as
well as the United States. Sanctions may actually help Maduro recover his
dismal popularity ratings. They have already prompted the Venezuelan congress
to grant Maduro expanded executive powers—the same powers he previously used to
limit speech and quell opposition.
Equally important, this action serves to chill
the incipient warming in hemispheric relations that resulted from President Obama’s
December 17, 2014, decision to resume diplomatic
relations with
Cuba. Coming only a month before the first Summit of the Americas in which the
United States will sit at the table with Cuba, the Venezuelan sanctions will
dim Obama’s luster as a friend of hemispheric reconciliation
And the hemisphere needs a boost of goodwill.
After a decade of robust growth, many South American countries are facing low
growth, rising inflation, and popular discontent—particularly Brazil. Increased
engagement could generate economic payoffs as well as diplomatic results.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff had been signaling an intent to reschedule
her state visit to the United States—cancelled in 2013 in the wake of the National
Security Agency’s phone taps. It would be unfortunate if regional loyalties
kept her from making the trip once again.
That the new sanctions target particular state
officials is cold comfort for those who view US policies as a heavy-handed
assault on the Venezuelan people. Here it is instructive to turn back to
conclusions reached by Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott in their decades-long study of economic sanctions. Their first lesson is that “the
economic impact of sanctions may be pronounced, especially on the target, but
other factors in the situation often overshadow the impact of sanctions in
determining the political outcome.”
It is worth asking whether the cost in
hemispheric goodwill is worth whatever impact these sanctions may have.
Sanctions may eventually help to put pressure on the administration. It is more
likely, however, that the Maduro regime will be brought down by its own
economic policies.
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