By Mengqi Sun 

The Trump administration issued a flurry of sanctions after Election Day, a move that could complicate foreign policy for the Biden administration, sanctions policy observers said.

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced 307 designations of blacklisted individuals and entities between Nov. 3 and Tuesday, the last full day under the Trump presidency, according to data analysis from law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Sanctions designations at the end of the Trump administration moved at a faster pace than during the rest of President Trump's time in office, with an average of about 1,000 entities and individuals blacklisted each year.

The Trump administration also levied more sanctions between election day and Inauguration Day than did other recent administrations, the analysis showed. The number of sanctions rose by roughly 53% from the number of designations OFAC imposed under President Obama between the 2016 election and inauguration of Mr. Trump. President George W. Bush imposed about 81 sanctions between Election Day in 2008 and Inauguration Day in 2009.

On Tuesday, OFAC imposed sanctions on three individuals, 14 entities and six vessels for allegedly facilitating the evasion of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector.

The difference in the number of postelection sanctions imposed under the Obama and Trump administrations is in line with how frequently the two administrations imposed sanctions during their time in office, according to Adam M. Smith, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

The surge in sanctions after elections generally could be the result of the outgoing administration trying to solidify foreign policy strategies and responding to urgent crises that may emerge regardless of the election, Mr. Smith said. The sanctions after the 2020 elections, for instance, consist of designations of individuals and entities over allegations of human rights abuses and interference in U.S. elections.

The Trump administration leaned heavily on economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool over the past four years. Many of its postelection sanctions were related to Iran or China, continuing a theme in 2020 as a whole, according to an analysis of designations data by the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank. The organization's study found that Iran was by far the most prominent target of U.S. sanctions last year.

"The number of overall designations remained high in 2020," Sam Dorshimer, a co-author of the CNAS study, said. "It just shows that sanctions has been and will continue to be a key policy tool."

The volley of postelection sanctions on Iran could be seen as the outgoing administration's effort to complicate the Biden administration's policy objectives, observers said.

Advisers to President Biden have signaled the new administration would seek to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran, which would mean a lifting of nuclear-related U.S. economic sanctions on Iran.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported the Trump administration had planned a pre-election volley of sanctions against Iran intended in part to make the pressure campaign against Tehran harder to reverse.

In a parting shot at outgoing administration, Iran on Tuesday sanctioned President Trump and nine other U.S. officials for their role in terrorist activities against Iran. On Wednesday, China said that it would sanction 28 senior American officials who served in the Trump administration as part of a testy send-off.

Reversals in U.S. foreign policy approaches and sanctions policies between two U.S. administrations can make compliance more challenging for businesses, Mr. Smith said. "It's just confusing for a business environment when there's no predictability, when you're dealing in an administration-driven decision-making process" that can result in significant changes in what deals are allowed and what are prohibited, he added.

Write to Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 20, 2021 18:47 ET (23:47 GMT)