Trump’s choice for top diplomat is no fan of sanctions
WASHINGTON — If there’s one thing Republicans and Democrats have agreed on in foreign policy, it is the power of sanctions. But Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state has seen things differently.
Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has said he has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, opposed the sanctions levied on Moscow following its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. They cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.
At his company’s 2014 annual meeting, Tillerson stated flatly: “We do not support sanctions, generally, because we don’t find them to be effective unless they are very well implemented comprehensibly and that’s a very hard thing to do.”
In Washington, both parties have supported sanctions against foreign governments, including sanctions that pressured Iran into nuclear concessions and pushed Myanmar to make democratic reforms.