30 July 1998. The economic sanctions applied unilaterally by the White House are starting to create a boomerang effect among U.S. exporters who are being affected financially by this policy, according to the "SELA Antenna in the United States" bulletin released today.

After several years of an increase in the number and type of trade sanctions against other countries, the United States Congress is beginning to feel a violent reaction from some of the most important groups of voters, especially the agricultural and business sectors, whose exports are being threatened, according to the bulletin.

A study carried out by the Presidential Exports Council (PEC), whose president is the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs, Stuart Eizenstat, says that until 1997 some 75 countries, representing 52 percent of the world’s population, were the object of sanctions or were threatened with one or more trade sanctions by the United states.

This year, the number increased to 76, with a total of 68 percent of the world’s population, after the recent addition of India, says the July edition of "SELA Antenna in the United States", a monthly publication which interprets the rulings of the U.S. Administration and Congress that affect hemispheric relations.

The "sanctions as a foreign policy tool are a growing source of confrontation between the United States and its trade partners" which include almost all of the 28 Latin American and Caribbean nations that form part of the Latin American Economic System (SELA).

Among the countries in the region affected by the U.S. economic sanctions policy is Cuba, through the so-called Helms-Burton Law, which punishes companies from third countries that invest in Cuban companies confiscated from U.S. citizens by the Cuban government after 1959.

They also include Mexico, because of its trade links with the previously cited Caribbean island, and Colombia, because its anti-drugs policy "does not comply with U.S. standards".

"The real or potential loss of U.S. exports could finally serve to delay or even invalidate some unilateral trade sanctions, an area in which foreign diplomatic protests and petitions to correct the situation seem to have had little weight", the bulletin says.

Dozens of multinational companies, important exporting firms and agricultural groups founded a protest group in 1997, called USA*Engage, to fight the growing trend in favour of imposing sanctions, of which more than half have been promulgated since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. This group already has the legislative project "Law to Improve Trade, Security and Human Rights through the reform of Sanctions", backed by Senator Richard Lugar (Republican, Indiana) and Representative Philip Crane (Republican, Illinois), which proposes a period of "suspension and revision" for all the laws that include sanctions.

On 25 June, Senator Christopher Dodd (Democrat, Connecticut) introduced the Sanctions Rationalization Law which proposes to overthrow the sanctions in force, including those included in the Helms-Burton Law.

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