NEW YORK, March 18. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump has instructed US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to reassess the existing US sanctions policy as it undermines the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency, Bessent said.
"President Trump has instructed me to rethink the sanctions regime. For a long time, we had what I call 'lazy sanctions.' They would just sit there, we think that it threatened the dollar's reserve currency status as people moved out of the dollar," he told Fox Business in an interview. "We are going for the maximum impact sanctions," he added.
The US treasury secretary said that the previous US administration's restrictions on Russia were extremely ineffective, as ex-President Joe Biden feared rising energy prices in the United States, so the efficiency of the Democrats' sanctions could be estimated at six out of ten.
"President Trump has instructed me that if we need to, we will go to a ten with sanctions," he added.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin told VGTRK journalist Pavel Zarubin that the US trade policy is based on sanctions that harm both those who impose them and those whom the target.