Scott R. Anderson of Brookings Institution Decodes Economic Jargon for Business and Political Reporters
Program Date: Oct. 20, 2022

The U.S. Treasury Dept. has become a major newsmaker since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but its press releases can seem impenetrable to the uninitiated. In this briefing, Brookings Institution scholar and law professor Scott R. Anderson offers a primer to journalists on how to decipher the agency jargon and how to mine its website for more information [TranscriptScott Anderson Video]

4 takeaways:

Know what the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is supposed to do. That 1977 law is the legal authority behind the vast majority of sanctions programs the United States imposes on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea to punish them for human rights abuses and other violations of international law. Economic sanctions are intended to cut off a bad foreign actor from the U.S. economy, but they are not meant to be protectionist or spur deglobalization, Anderson said.

When reporting on a sanction, look up the executive orders. The IEEP is “an interesting law” because Congress has given the president broad authority to take action against foreign bad actors. The president does this by issuing executive orders that are published in the Federal Register and instruct the various executive branch agencies on how to implement the law to advance certain U.S. policy goals.  More orders are being added as the Biden administration and the EU ramp up their efforts to punish Russia for the Ukraine invasion.  The executive orders explain the legal basis for the sanctions – and other related laws or orders that might be relevant. Sometimes you will see someone designated as an “SDGT,” which stands for a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. “You have to know that that refers to Executive Order 13224, but you wouldn’t know that necessarily,” Anderson said. “You have to dig around the Treasury website to piece that together.”

Treasury is now publishing useful mini-biographies of those being sanctioned. These can offer far more detail than the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.  That’s the list that major financial institutions use to see whom they may not do business with. But there are exceptions. “To understand what’s happening, you actually have to dig still yet a little deeper because weighing on the SDN list means you are presumptively prohibited from engaging in certain activities, but it doesn’t always mean you’re categorically prohibited,” Anderson explained. Sometimes Treasury issues licenses to allow certain economic transactions (like importing of medicines, or oil sales in the case of Russia) with sanctioned entities. “You don’t always see them linked in these press releases, which is very frustrating,” Anderson noted.

Journalists need to go beyond the law to report on “the echo effect” of sanctions. For example, while the U.S. government intends to punish the Taliban in Afghanistan, it does not want to shut down the Afghan economy. Yet some companies are deciding it’s too risky to do any business in Afghanistan, or pulling out of Russia, anticipating future risk of more sanctions, civil suits or other woes.  “That means that you’ll see economic actors disengage from activities that would not themselves be prohibited, some of which the U.S. government might actually want them to do,” Anderson said. “Unless you really understand that sanctions echo, the market effects of sanctions, not just the direct legal effects, you don’t get the full sense of the impact in the real world of a lot of sanctions measures.”


This program was sponsored by the Hinrich Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content.

Now accepting applications: Hinrich Foundation Award for Distinguished Reporting on Trade, $10,000

Scott R. Anderson
Visiting Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution; Senior Editor, Lawfare
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