Foreign Policy Export Controls and American Multinational Corporations

Abstract

The increasing utilization of foreign policy export controls by the U. S. Government has generated considerable conflicts with American multinational corporations. The exercise of such controls against the Soviet Union, Iran, Nicaragua, Libya, and other countries entails loss of sales for many American firms and also threatens important MNC objectives such as free trade, corporate autonomy and neutrality, and contract sanctity. However, the Executive Branch has discovered that the administrative and political difficulties encountered in linking trade to diplomatic purpose are formidable, and that the internationalization of production by American MNCs has made it difficult to regulate foreign access to the American capitalist warehouse as required by trade sanctions.