In early 2022, there was much optimism that sanctions against Russia would cripple the Russian economy. Those predictions did not come true. recent articles economist Here’s why.
Before 2022, Kazakhstan sold relatively small amounts of electrical machinery to Russia. After the invasion of Ukraine, Kazakhstan’s exports surged more than seven times. How was Kazakhstan able to increase production so quickly? Notice that at the same time this happened, Kazakhstan’s imports of electrical machinery from the EU also surged. It is clear that Russia was using the former Soviet republic as a means to circumvent sanctions.
All this is bad news for European policymakers. “We expected some level of leakage, but it wasn’t on the scale that we currently know,” one official said. In December, european unionThe 12th round of restrictive measures targeted businesses in Armenia and Uzbekistan for the first time. Officials have since threatened further sanctions against third countries and European countries that export to them, but have only taken action against some companies. For each company added to the blacklist, another company will be registered in a different location.
The same problem arises when countries seek to diversify their supply chains. The United States has imposed high tariffs on imports from China to reduce dependence on the Chinese economy. As a result, U.S. imports from neighboring countries such as Vietnam soared. Not surprisingly, Vietnam’s imports from China also increased at the same time. We still buy a lot from China, but in a more circuitous way and with higher shipping costs.
This does not mean that sanctions are necessarily a bad idea. It is plausible that sanctions against Russia have at least slightly reduced Russia’s ability to wage war. Rather, what is important is that we should not expect sanctions to be flawless.
PS.I realized this after writing this article. another example:
Interestingly, American media has accused China of supporting Russia’s war machine, but not Germany.
