After Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned U.S. attacks on Iran as a violation of international law, President Donald Trump said he asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “cut off all dealings with Spain,” and threatened to stop all business with the country. Spain’s foreign minister warned that targeting Spain would affect the entire European Union, but the Treasury Department can, and under Trump has, targeted specific foreign individuals and companies.
Historically, the Treasury uses sanctions to restrict foreigners who pose serious threats to the U.S. or to their own countries. The U.S. enforces sanctions under 37 official programs, some aimed at actors tied to specific states like North Korea or Russia and others, such as the Global Magnitsky program, intended to punish individuals worldwide for serious human rights abuses or corruption. Designated parties are placed on the “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDN) list, which can freeze assets in U.S. jurisdiction, bar entry to the U.S., and prevent use of U.S. financial services; U.S. persons and companies are prohibited from dealing with them.
Treasury literature says sanctions, when used properly, can disrupt weapons procurement, cripple criminal networks, degrade terrorist capabilities and change the behavior of threatening regimes. Former officials and diplomats say that since Trump began his second term, the administration has often used and removed Treasury sanctions in ways that diverge from precedent and from the programs’ intended purposes — sometimes after critics speak out against the president or his allies, and sometimes to reward perceived supporters.
Examples in 2025 and 2026 illustrate the trend. After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a former defense minister over the Gaza war, Trump’s Treasury began sanctioning ICC judges and prosecutors. By December 2025, 11 ICC staffers had been sanctioned; apart from two ICC staffers sanctioned by Trump in 2020, no other president had targeted ICC personnel, according to Treasury data. The ICC protested, saying the sanctions threatened the independence of an impartial judicial institution and risked the international legal order.
In July 2025 the Treasury sanctioned United Nations human rights official Francesca Albanese after she characterized Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories as genocide while investigating abuses. That same month, the Treasury designated Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court minister Alexandre de Moraes under the Global Magnitsky program, accusing him of an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions and politicized prosecutions related to the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro. Democrats including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine and Jeanne Shaheen criticized the move, saying it violated the spirit of the Magnitsky Act and lacked evidence.
After Brazil’s court convicted Bolsonaro in September, the Treasury also sanctioned De Moraes’ wife. The department later lifted the sanctions on the justice and his wife in December; ICC members and others sanctioned remain on the list. Treasury spokeswoman Gigi O’Connell declined to comment for reporting.
On Oct. 24, 2025, the Treasury sanctioned Colombian President Gustavo Petro, citing his alleged engagement in “international proliferation of illicit drugs or their means of production.” Petro, who had publicly accused the U.S. of violating international law for maritime attacks and called a U.S. attack on a Colombian fisherman “murder,” called the sanction a lie, noting Colombia seized more cocaine than any other government under his leadership, and denounced the action as arbitrary and oppressive.
Those targeted have legal and political recourse: the Treasury allows petitions for removal from the SDN list, and delisting can follow demonstrable behavioral changes or other remedies such as monitored financial disclosures. Lawyers who assist petitioners say applicants often offer measures — audited financials, donations, divestments — to address the underlying concerns. Former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew emphasized that designations were once based on “irreproachable” facts.
But former officials say some of the recent lifts do not reflect such changes. Antal Rogán, head of the Hungarian cabinet, was sanctioned on Jan. 7, 2025, under the Biden administration for involvement in political corruption; his sanctions were removed in April 2025. Former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman suggested the delisting reflected perceived personal loyalty between Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán rather than changed behavior. Orbán had posted a video of Trump endorsing him at an inaugural White House event, writing, “With friends, everything is easier.”
Other delistings raised similar questions. In October 2025 the U.S. removed sanctions on Horacio Cartes, a former Paraguayan president previously accused by Treasury of facilitating bribes for Hezbollah-linked events and of pervasive corruption, including allegedly buying legislative votes. Marc Ostfield, U.S. ambassador to Paraguay from 2022 to 2025, said Cartes had not shown a clear change in the behavior that led to his listing, making the delisting hard to understand given U.S. stated concerns about Hezbollah links.
Milorad Dodik, former president of the Republika Srpska, was delisted in October 2025 after earlier being sanctioned for undermining Balkan stability, cozying up to Putin and profiting from corruption. Critics, including Sen. Shaheen, called the relief undeserved. In February 2026 Dodik posted photos of a White House meeting with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt after the delisting, prompting questions NPR sought to have the White House answer; a White House representative did not respond by email.
Critics see a pattern of rewards and punishments oriented around political loyalty rather than consistent national-security rationale. “It’s supposed to operate independent of personal interests, and it’s supposed to reinforce our strategic interests, not advance personal vendettas,” Pressman said. Richard Nephew, a former State Department anti-corruption coordinator, called the pattern “political retribution rather than a serious use of sanctions tools for behavior modification purposes.”
Albanese, the U.N. official, has taken legal action: her family filed a lawsuit on Feb. 26, 2026, alleging that Trump, Bessent and others blocked her access to property in the U.S. and violated her constitutional rights and the sanctions rules. Sanctioned individuals and institutions, including the ICC, have publicly condemned the measures as threats to judicial independence and international law.
The consequences for those sanctioned are profound: assets in U.S. jurisdiction are frozen; sanctioned persons are barred from U.S. entry and from U.S. financial systems; U.S. companies may not transact with them. Former ambassadors and Treasury officials worry that capricious or politically motivated designations and delistings undermine the integrity and effectiveness of U.S. sanctions policy and damage America’s standing when sanctions appear to reward allies and punish critics rather than target demonstrable wrongdoing.
Former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew recalled that designations were once grounded in rigorous, carefully vetted facts. The recent sequence of targeted designations and relatively unexplained delistings, combined with high-profile meetings between former designees and administration officials, has prompted lawmakers and former diplomats to demand clarity about how sanctions decisions are made and whether they are being used to advance personal or political agendas instead of U.S. national-security interests.
