r that their business with China may suffer if they do not take part. Infrastructure development spending is estimated to total around $300 billion by the year 2000. It is the prospect of losing such opportunities that compelled the vice president-international of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Willard Workman, to characterize the lobbying campaign as “an effort of some extremists in the environmental movement to export their concept of environmental policy” (Yerton 1996) . This statement reflects the view that the Ex-Im Bank should be in the business of promoting commercial interests, not necessarily studying environmental impacts or conveying American foreign policy concerns. However, a commercial policy without environmental guidelines also exports a certain concept of environmental policy: one that signals that Americans are willing to do anything in the pursuit of profit. If the manner in which U.S. government agencies operate overseas are a reflection of American values, then the Ex-Im Bank is faced with the dilemma of choosing between two sets of values: that of corporations and that of environmentalists. If neither extreme is an acceptable reflection of American values as a whole, then the solution must lie somewhere in between. The most workable compromise is to establish a minimum standard of environmental guidelines. Given U.S. market leadership in many environmental and infrastructure technologies, as well as the high demand for investment in China and other developing countries, such guidelines should not be too onerous a restraint on American firms wishing to conduct business overseas. Sanctions: Forceful or Futile? Within the United States there is a large divide between some policy makers who favor maintaining trade sanctions as a foreign policy tool, and private sector interests who insist that they are only effective in hurting U.S. businesses. The track record for unilateral actions taken by t...
