United States trade embargo against Nicaragua (1985-1990)

Executive Order 12513 imposed broad United States trade and transport restrictions on Nicaragua from 1 May 1985. It was not a literal blockade and should be analysed separately from covert action, support for the Contra insurgency, military operations, aid policy and earlier sugar-quota measures.

Prohibitions and exceptions

The order prohibited imports of Nicaraguan goods and services into the United States, exports of United States goods to Nicaragua except specified donations intended to relieve human suffering, and entry into United States ports by Nicaraguan air carriers and vessels. It also prohibited transactions that evaded those rules and authorised regulations and licences. The exact scope therefore depended on transaction type, origin, carrier and applicable exception.

Nicaragua redirected some trade towards other partners. Economic decline also reflected armed conflict, domestic policy, loss of external finance, regional disruption and changing Soviet-bloc support. No welfare or mortality total should be attributed to the order without a defined period and counterfactual.

Legal proceedings and outcome

The International Court of Justice's 1986 merits judgment addressed United States military and paramilitary conduct as well as the trade embargo. Its treaty and customary-law findings must be kept within their jurisdictional and factual scope. It did not adjudicate every policy associated with the wider campaign.

A General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade panel separately considered the trade measures. Its report, L/6053, was not adopted and therefore did not acquire the status of an adopted contracting-parties ruling.

Executive Order 12707 terminated the emergency on 13 March 1990 after Nicaragua's election. Electoral change, war termination and the embargo's effect remain distinct. War exhaustion, domestic mobilisation, economic crisis and external pressure all contributed to the setting in which the vote occurred.

See also

Embargo · International Emergency Economic Powers Act (1977) · ICJ Nicaragua v United States (1986) · United States embargo against Cuba (1960-present) · United States economic pressure and covert action against Allende's Chile (1970-1973)

Sources

1. President of the United States, Executive Order 12513, 1 May 1985.
2. National Archives, Executive Order 12513 disposition and Federal Register record, 1985.
3. International Court of Justice, *Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua*, case 70, merits judgment of 27 June 1986.
4. General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, *United States: Trade Measures Affecting Nicaragua*, L/6053, 13 October 1986, unadopted report.
5. President of the United States, Executive Order 12707, Termination of Emergency with Respect to Nicaragua, 13 March 1990.
6. Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott and Barbara Oegg, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, third edition (Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2007).