Biden announces new sanctions to 'squeeze' Russia

On Friday, President Biden announced new trade sanctions against Russia, as Ukraine remained under siege. Biden announced the U.S. will revoke Russia’s “most favored nation” trade status and ban imports of Russian alcohol, seafood and diamonds.

Video transcript

JOE BIDEN: Later today, together with other NATO allies in the G7-- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union-- we're going to jointly announce several new steps to squeeze Putin and hold him more-- even more accountable for his aggression against Ukraine. And I want to speak to a few of those points today.

First, each of our nations is going to take steps to deny most favored nation status to Russia. Now, most favored nation status designation means two countries have agreed to trade with each other under the best possible terms-- low tariffs, few barriers of trade, and the highest possible imports allowed. In the United States, we call this Permanent Normal Trade Relations, PNTR, but it's the same thing.

Revoking PNTR for Russia is going to make it harder for Russia to do business with the United States. And doing it in unison with other nations to make up half of the global economy will be another crushing blow to the Russian economy. It's already suffering very badly from our sanctions.

We're also taking a further step of banning imports of goods from several signature sectors of the Russian economy, including seafoods, vodka, and diamonds. And we're going to continue to squeeze Putin. The G7 will seek to deny Russia the ability to borrow from leading multi-national institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Putin is an aggressor. He is the aggressor. And Putin must pay the price. He cannot pursue a war that threatens the very foundations-- which he's doing-- the very foundations of international peace and stability, and then ask for financial help from the international community.