Rowan Scarpino

Oct 23, 2024 | cnas.org | Emily Kilcrease |Eleanor Hume |Rowan Scarpino

Executive SummaryThe Biden administration has exceeded the Trump administration in the number of financial sanctions and entity-based export controls placed on Chinese persons (i.e., individuals or entities). The Trump administration added 216 Chinese persons to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List and 259 Chinese persons to the Entity List.

May 7, 2024 | cnas.org | Emily Kilcrease |Geoffrey Gertz |Rowan Scarpino

It’s been a couple weeks since President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that will require ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the social media app TikTok, to sell it off by January or face an outright ban in the United States. The case is a little unusual, because the details of deciding whether or not a foreign company can invest in a U.S. business, or own it outright, is usually left to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.

May 6, 2024 | cnas.org | Emily Kilcrease |Rowan Scarpino |Geoffrey Gertz

Overcapacity is kind of a fuzzy word, and that’s saying a lot for an economic term. “At a basic level, overcapacity is too much production and too little demand,” said Geoffrey Gertz, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. It’s the idea that a country has subsidized or propped up its industries so much that it’s drowning in products. ... Gertz at CNAS said it’s not just about electric cars.

May 2, 2024 | cnas.org | Rowan Scarpino |Emily Kilcrease

In future crises or conflicts in U.S.-Chinese relations, the economic dimension will be critical. Yet Beijing currently has good reason to doubt the credibility of Washington’s sanctions threats. This is because the United States’s response has been muted in the face of recent Chinese provocations, including Beijing’s efforts to erode democracy in Hong Kong, the dispatching of a spy balloon over the United States, and Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.

Apr 20, 2024 | cnas.org | Rachel Ziemba |Rowan Scarpino

Last month, the Biden administration announced that sanctions relief on Venezuela would not be renewed. Reinstating the sanctions that were temporarily lifted in October was a carefully crafted decision intended to maximize the United States’ leverage. But sanctions will never be effective so long as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro values his political survival above his country’s economic well-being.