Ted Snyder, antiwar.com

“Tariffs,” President Donald Trump is fond of reminding us, “is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary.” It’s the most beautiful word “because tariffs are going to make us rich as hell. It’s going to bring our countries businesses back that left us.”

And that’s how it started. On “Liberation Day,” on April 2, Trump announced a 10% minimum tariff on goods from all countries with some countries being hit with higher “reciprocal tariffs.” “For decades,” he explained, “our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike.”

But Trump’s use of tariffs and sanctions quickly broadened as a versatile tool for much more than returning business to America. First they became a blunt tool for regime change; then they became the go to tool for everything from foreign policy goals to election interference.

Iran and Venezuela have felt it the hardest. The JCPOA nuclear agreement promised Iran an escape from sanctions in return for limiting its civilian nuclear program. Though Iran verifiably kept its promise, the United States did not, and the first Trump administration unilaterally pulled out of the agreement. The result for Iran was the return to crippling sanctions that would grow worse when the United Kingdom, France, and Germany would follow with snapback sanctions. Since then, the list of sanctions on Iran has only grown.

Those sanctions created an economic and cost of living crisis in Iran that drove protestors into the streets. The protestors demanded economic reforms that the Iranian government was powerless to implement as long as they were strangled by U.S. sanctions. But they could not escape the hold of those sanctions without concessions that would be existential for survival of both the country and the government. American sanctions were being used as an economic weapon for regime change.

Ervand Abrahamian, Distinguished Professor of History at City University of New York author of The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations, told me that, as demonstrated by their refusal to consider Iranian olive branches, the tearing up of the nuclear agreement and the refusal to ease sanctions, U.S. policy toward Iran has always been about “increasing pressure until the regime collapses.”

And now, along with “decisive” military strikes, included on the menu of regime change tools is even more economic strangulation. One option reportedly under consideration is imposing a naval blockade that would stop Iran from exporting any oil.

https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2026/02/01/trump-is-broadening-his-use-of-economic-warfare/