This chapter focuses in particular on import restrictions and export controls as weapons of economic warfare as used against Russia, as opposed to the sanctions measures that are the focus of much of the book. These tools supplement the sanctions measures and help promote the same foreign policy ends through alternative means. For example, the chapter examines changes to Russia’s “most favored nation” status, and the resulting effect on imports into the U.S. from Russia. Import bans were also implemented on many items from Russia in multiple jurisdictions. Export controls of high-tech items are also discussed.

In recent years, the backlash against the negotiations of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union (EU) and the United States, the conclusion of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), including the proposal on a multilateral investment court, the conclusion of the negotiations of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the United States’ formal withdrawal from the Agreement have given new momentum to the public discussion between treaty protection to foreign investors vis-à-vis the States’ sovereign right to design and implement regulation to achieve economic development.

The global ascendancy of neoliberal economics has deepened inequalities between and within nations and largely undermined efforts toward sustainable development. Based on a belief that the market should be the organizing principle for social, political and economic decisions, policymakers in many countries promoted privatization of state activities and an increased role for the free market, flexibility in labor markets and trade and investment liberalization. The benefits of these policies frequently fail to reach the indigenous peoples of the world, who acutely feel their costs, such as environmental degradation, cultural dispossessions and loss of traditional lands and territories. As vulnerable and often marginalized segments of the world’s population, indigenous peoples are at a heightened risk of experiencing the negative consequences of globalization. Understanding this reality could provide pathways for effective interventions to alleviate, overcome or, at the very least, minimize such effects.