The Global Sanctions Data Base: An Update that Includes the Years of the Trump Presidency

We introduce and discuss 383 previously unrecorded sanction cases among which 77 emerged during 2016-2019, a period that coincides with the Trump presidency. These newly considered cases are included in the updated Global Sanctions Data Base (GSDB) of Felbermayr et al. (2020), thus raising the total of sanction cases recorded there to 1105. Our descriptive analysis reveals that a number of sanctions were lifted in 2016. However, in 2017 we witnessed a substantial increase in the deployment of new – primarily ‘smart’ (i.e., financial and travel) – sanctions of which more than half were imposed by the United States. Moreover, we observed a significant rise in the number of sanctions aiming to ‘change’ the policies of sanctioned states and to fight ‘terrorism’. Almost all sanctions initiated by the Trump administration are still in place, so assessment of their success remains open.