How To Win ENEMIES and Influence NO ONE
The Thompson-Torricelli Sanctions Bill
Part of a Continuing Series from the Business Coalition for U.S.-China Trade
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The Thompson-Torricelli unilateral sanctions bill would not influence Chinese behavior. Instead, it would antagonize U.S. allies, isolate the U.S. from other countries dealing with China, and fail to influence China in any positive way.
Some examples of this bill's extreme and ill-conceived elements:
- Sanctions could be triggered by sales of goods that do not appear on any multilateral export control list. And unilateral sanctions could even be triggered by domestic transfers within China of items not controlled by any international agreement.
- The bill's standard for mandatory unilateral sanctions is so loose that sanctions could be triggered by leaks to a newspaper of unconfirmed reports from third parties. The "credible evidence" standard in the past has been defined by Congress to mean "information that induces a firm suspicion". Important national security decisions should be based on more than "suspicions".
- The measures proposed in the bill would represent the largest expansion of U.S. unilateral sanctions since the end of the Cold War. Such unilateral measures, which only punish Americans, utterly failed to deter India or Pakistan from nuclear tests and had to be scaled back by the Brownback amendment.
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THOMPSON-TORRICELLI PUNISHES AMERICA, NOT CHINA.
OPPOSE S. 2645
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Business Coalition for U.S.-China Trade
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Phone (202) 659-5147 • Fax (202) 659-1347
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