Don Pease - Ugandan Trade Ban, Instrumental To Toppling The Genocidal Regime of Idi Amin

Ugandan Trade Ban, Instrumental To Toppling The Genocidal Regime of Idi Amin

Pease quickly distinguished himself as a skillful legislator and staunch human rights advocate, when in his first term of Congress, he sponsored legislation to cut off U.S. trade with Uganda, which was enduring a brutal reign of terror at the hands of the infamous dictator Idi Amin in which at least 500,000 Ugandans perished. He succeeded in getting the trade ban enacted in 1979, over the opposition of the Carter Administration. Within months of the establishment of the enactment of the trade ban, Amin was deposed. The trade ban resulted in the sudden loss of hundreds of million of dollars in hard currency to Amin, mostly from U.S. coffee exports to the U.S., which Amin had used to buy arms, luxury goods, and the loyalty of his mercenary army. It is widely considered one of the best examples of the most effective uses of economic sanctions in modern U.S. foreign policy.

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