Sanctions as Collective Punishment: Venezuela

Denying Impact of Venezuela Sanctions is ‘Like Climate Denial’

by TRNN

May 10, 2019

 An analysis of the effects of US sanctions on Venezuela has attracted some debate recently. The original analysis was co-written by Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research together with Jeffrey Sachs of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

It was titled, Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela.

One of its central arguments was that as many as 40,000 people may have died as a result of the US sanctions on Venezuela since August 2017. Three other economists— Ricardo Hausmann, Miguel Angel Santos, and Frank Muci— all of them of Harvard University’s Center for International Development, countered Weisbrot and Sachs’s paper. Two of them even published a critique of it on the website of Americas Quarterly. We should also add that Hausmann is also an advisor and representative to the Inter-American Development Bank for Venezuelan parallel president, Juan Guaido.

CEPR co-director Mark Weisbrot responds to Guaidó economic advisors' dismissal of the U.S. sanctions' effects on Venezuela.