Tough US sanctions packages are here to stay—whether it’s Harris or Trump

The zealous use of the tool—a low-cost way to press the U.S.’s agenda abroad—will likely continue as a permanent feature of U.S. foreign policy, regardless of who wins this year’s presidential election.

The U.S. has long leaned on its financial primacy and the dollar’s status as a reserve currency to exert worldwide influence. But Russia’s war in Ukraine led to a tectonic shift in the U.S. approach to economic coercion, with the U.S. and its allies joining in an ambitious plan to try to upend Russia’s economy and the war machine it supports.

Imposing sanctions is in many ways an easy choice for Washington—they have far lower direct costs than other foreign-policy tools, such as sending military aid, and effectively deputize banks and other actors in the private sector to serve on the front line of their implementation.

These moves have won broad support among lawmakers of both parties. Still, more than two years into the conflict, debate is continuing about the efficacy of the measures. But the next U.S. president, be it Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, will be unlikely to derail the sanctions train, though they may differ on where to make the next stop.

The Biden administration added 1,621 entities and 879 individuals, or 2,500 targets total, to its sanctions list in 2023, up from 2,275 such targets designated in 2022, according to figures from the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank. That number is a dramatic increase from historic norms—from 2017 to 2021, the U.S. added on average about 815 targets to the list each year.

The expanding use of sanctions isn’t just a Biden-era phenomenon, even if past forays into sanctions to target national security concerns haven’t approached the scale seen in recent years. There has been a steady progression in the use of sanctions, from the Obama administration through the Trump presidency and more recently.

Harris’s campaign declined to make available an official who could speak about her views on foreign policy. Her campaign did recently tap Brian Nelson, a former Treasury official who until recently headed the department’s efforts to counter illicit finance, as a member of her team. Observers roundly expect that Harris’s approach would at least mirror, and perhaps be even tougher, than Biden’s.

The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment. The former president’s views, despite his four years in the White House, can be difficult to read.

“It’s much harder to predict him on that stuff," said William Reinsch, a former Clinton administration appointee who now works as a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based bipartisan think tank. “I would say [he is] sort of inconstant. He tends to veer from one thing to another.’"

Asked whether he might consider easing Russia-related sanctions as a path toward peace, Trump recently told Bloomberg Businessweek that he didn’t “love" the tool but had found it very useful with Iran.

“Support for these sanctions [is] very, very strongly held in both parties," said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale University management professor who testified before Congress in 2022 in support of cutting off capital flows to Russia. “Most times, the Trump administration was just as supportive as the Biden administration was on these sanctions," he said.

Trump has touted his supposed special relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his views on the country differ substantially from most of the Democratic Party leadership as well as some in his own Republican Party. He may be more willing than Harris to offer sanctions relief in exchange for concessions that could bring the Ukraine war to an end, said Emily Kilcrease, a former senior staffer in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative who now researches geoeconomic statecraft as a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Broadly speaking, though, Trump in his time in the Oval Office ratcheted up the use of sanctions and similar tools, particularly targeting China.

“Certainly, there was a comfort under the Trump administration in using sanctions pretty extensively," Kilcrease said.

Unlike, for example, President Barack Obama, the next president will inherit the fruits of dramatically expanded multilateral cooperation among the U.S. and its allies. The U.S., in seeking support for its efforts to hem in Russia, marshaled allies in the U.K., Europe and elsewhere, including Japan and Canada.

“That actually is a major change," said Carlton Greene, a former chief counsel for the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network who now works as a partner at law firm Crowell & Moring. “You really saw the EU and the U.K. start to expand and develop the administrative infrastructure for their sanctions regimes in a way that they had not done before."

The next president will also step into a climate of mounting speculation about the limits of sanctions as a means to respond to Chinese ambitions related to Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing regards as part of China.

Greene, who counsels clients on sanctions, said the business and investment community has expressed a growing eagerness to understand how sanctions might be applied in different Taiwan-related scenarios. Trump notably took a tough line on China even during his first election campaign, though the enthusiasm to contain China has since won broad bipartisan support and led to action from the Biden administration.

Unlike, for example, export controls already in place to deny certain goods to China’s military and thwart its artificial intelligence ambitions or tariffs on Chinese-made goods, wide-scale sanctions meant to disrupt its economy are widely seen as a last resort, given the degree of U.S.-China entanglement.

“The U.S. is not going to do really drastic moves, like sanctioning major Chinese banks or [China’s central bank], unless there’s an active military conflict," said Kilcrease.

Write to Richard Vanderford at Richard.Vanderford@wsj.com