Gordon Lubold, Kate OâKeeffe and Laurence Norman
WASHINGTON — The U.S. is prepared to impose sanctions and export controls on critical sectors of the Russian economy if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, and is working to mitigate market shocks if Russia withholds energy supplies in retaliation, officials said.
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Taking a page out of the Trump administration playbook to pressure Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. , senior administration officials on Tuesday described potentially banning the export to Russia of various products that use microelectronics based on U.S. equipment, software or technology.
From the archives (March 2021): Huawei loses market share outside China
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While the officials didn’t specify the products, they said that the goal would be to hit critical Russian industrial sectors that Putin has given priority to, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
“The export control options we’re considering alongside our allies and partners would hit Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize his economy quite hard, and it would impair areas that are of importance to him,” a senior administration official said.
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Administration officials declined to provide many specifics on the kinds of sanctions it would impose, but said the moves would exacerbate the selloff in Russian markets, raise the country’s cost of borrowing and hurt the value of Russia’s currency.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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