Sanctions as more than verbal condemnation and less than the use of armed forces.
– UN general secretary Kofi Annan
The USA has been using economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool. It has imposed economic sanctions against Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela, etc.
Besides other countries, the sanctions are also used against members of commercial entities and private individuals, as well as non-state actors such as terror groups, etc. affecting their participation in global trade.
Nonviolent Coercive Diplomacy. The sanctions in the conflict continuum fall somewhere midway between censure and armed hostilities. Sanctions are frequently used as part of nonviolent coercive diplomacy to coerce targets away from unacceptable behaviour and restrain them from behaving in those ways in the future as well. This nonviolent nature of sanctions has made them so appealing in international relations and since the end of the cold war, they have grown very popular.