A trade penalty imposed by one nation onto one or more other nations. Sanctions can be unilateral, imposed by only one country on one other country, or multilateral, imposed by one or more countries on a number of different countries. Often allies will impose multilateral sanctions on their foes. 

|||Import tariffs, licensing costs and administrative hurdles are often enforced, making it more difficult if not impossible for the nation(s) bearing the sanction to trade with the nation imposing it. An example of a trade sanction is the set of stringent penalties the United States' imposed against Cuba from 1963 to 2000. In the year 2000 some of the sanctions were repealed, specifically those on medical and agriculture goods.