As of 2025-2026, the countries most comprehensively banned from international trade due to heavy U.S. and international sanctions include Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Russia. Other regions subject to severe restrictions or embargoes include specific parts of Ukraine (Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk), Belarus, Venezuela, Myanmar, and various nations under UN arms embargoes like Libya, Somalia, and Sudan.
Comprehensively sanctioned and embargoed countries, where virtually all transactions are prohibited, currently include Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and the Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk.
The top five most sanctioned countries in 2025 are Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. These nations continue to attract global sanctions due to geopolitical conflicts, nuclear programs, human rights violations, corruption, or destabilizing international activities.
Embargoed sanctioned countries (currently Cuba, Iran, and North Korea,) prohibit all transactions (including imports, exports, services, and financial transactions) without an export license. Targeted sanctions prohibit certain exports of items, technical data, and/or software without an export license.
Comprehensive sanctions are currently in place targeting Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and certain conflict regions of Ukraine, which heavily restrict nearly all trade and financial transactions between U.S. persons and those regions.
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Which countries are blacklisted?
As of November 2022, only three countries were on the FATF blacklist: North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar. The FATF has been characterized as effective in shifting laws and regulations to combat illicit financial flows.
The document discusses different types of barriers to international trade, including cultural and social barriers, political barriers, tariffs and trade restrictions, boycotts, standards, anti-dumping penalties, and monetary barriers.
(2) The countries subject to United Nations Security Council arms embargoes are: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, and Sudan.
The Proclamation continues the full restrictions and entry limitations of nationals from the original 12 high-risk countries established under Proclamation 10949: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
Comprehensive sanctions prohibit virtually ALL exports/imports and other transactions without a license or other US Government authorization. Targeted sanctions are prohibitions on trade in specified goods, technologies, and services with specific organizations (including foreign governments) and persons.
In August 2017, the US Congress enacted the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act that imposed new sanctions on Russia for interference in the 2016 elections and its involvement in Ukraine and Syria.
According to the 2023 International Trade Barrier Index (TBI), the countries that ranked the worst for imposing the highest trade barriers were India, Russia, and Indonesia.
Since 2008, Russia has maintained a centralized internet blacklist (known as the "single register") administered by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor). The list is used for the censorship of individual URLs, domain names, and IP addresses.
National Treasury also welcomes the removal of five other African countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania) from the EU List, following their removal from the FATF greylist in 2025.
Trade sanctions are measures which restrict the direct or indirect import and export of goods, non-financial services or technology in relation to, or for Use in or by a particular country, region or person.
