The book examines U.S. sanctions policy from 1950 to 2010, reporting a new and detailed set of data on all trade sanctions imposed on foreign nations by the White House during this period, and all trade sanctions legislation proposed in Congress. It develops a model of sanctions policymaking that incorporates lobbying for organized special interest groups. The book's main argument is that U.S. sanctions policy has been powerfully shaped by domestic political calculations about the economic costs and benefits of different policies for particular groups; only rarely has policy reflected strategic calculations about how best to pressure foreign governments to alter their behavior in line with broader U.S. foreign policy objectives. Besides reporting the new quantitative data, the book presents detailed histories of the evolution of U.S. policy towards Cuba, the Soviet Bloc, South Africa, China, and Iraq. The book will be available from Cambridge University Press in 2012.