Sanctions, Antitrust, and the Architecture of Unchecked Executive Power
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The Reuters allegation about U.S. sanctions being pushed for electoral benefit in Brazil raises a question that deserves a structural answer: how does the United States actually decide who gets sanctioned, and what legal framework governs that power? The short answer is that it is far less constrained than many listeners might assume.
A comparison to antitrust law illuminates the gap. Antitrust enforcement in the U.S. rests primarily on the Sherman Act of 1890. Section 1 of the Act prohibits contracts or conspiracies in restraint of trade — collusion between competitors. Section 2 prohibits monopolization, though simply holding a monopoly is not, by itself, illegal under U.S. law. The legal standard for monopolization requires two showings: first, that the company holds monopoly power in a relevant market — typically defined as a market share above roughly 70%, though no bright-line rule exists — and second, that the company acquired or maintained that power through exclusionary conduct designed to prevent competitors from participating, rather than through vigorous competition alone. Critically, antitrust enforcement is subject to judicial oversight: the DOJ or FTC must bring a case, a court must evaluate it against evidentiary standards, and the process is subject to appeal.
Sanctions work differently. The President holds broad authority under statutes including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — IEEPA — to designate individuals and entities, freeze assets, and impose trade restrictions, with relatively limited judicial review. That discretion is enormously powerful, and it operates with far fewer institutional checks than antitrust enforcement. If sanctions designations were being shaped — as Reuters reports — to disadvantage Lula-aligned figures during a foreign election campaign, the legal framework provides little of the procedural protection that antitrust law builds in. The distinction is blunt: antitrust has courts; sanctions have presidents. Which of those constraints proves more durable depends heavily on who occupies the Oval Office.