US 'May Very Well' Lift Syria Sanctions, Trump Says
President Donald Trump said the U.S. is considering lifting sanctions against Syria to help give the Syrian people a “fresh start” following last year’s fall of the Bashar Assad regime.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Trump said U.S. officials likely will discuss the issue later this week with Turkish officials on the sidelines of planned peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey on May 15. Trump said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which shares a border with Syria, has asked the U.S. about removing those sanctions.
“We're going to have to make a decision on the sanctions, which we may very well relieve. We may take them off of Syria because we want to give them a fresh start,” Trump told reporters May 12 at the White House. “Many people have asked me about that, because the way we have them sanctioned, it doesn't really give them much of a start. So we want to see if we can help them out. So we'll make that determination.”
The Biden administration issued some sanctions relief for Syria in January through a license that authorizes certain government, energy and personal remittance-related transactions (see 2501060034). The State Department told Congress in April that it was examining options to further ease sanctions (see 2504170001).
Other governments, including the U.K. and the EU, recently have lifted certain Syria sanctions (see 2503060052, 2504240008 and 2502240010).