Trump uses sanctions as a favorite form of retribution — against friend and foe alike

President Trump has deployed them against foreign adversaries. He has used them with publicly traded companies. And he has even, briefly, slapped them on American allies.

So it was little surprise this week when — dismayed with Iraq’s recent parliamentary vote to expel U.S. troops from the country — Trump reached for one of his favorite means of retribution: sanctions.

“We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever,” Trump told the reporters traveling with him on Air Force One after the Iraq vote over the weekend. “It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame. If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq — very big sanctions on Iraq.”

Read the full story and more in The Washington Post.