# Secondary Sanctions Push Trade Off the Dollar

Each round of American enforcement against third-country intermediaries pushes sanctioned trade further into non-dollar settlement and opaque logistics, so the measures deliver diminishing returns while steadily expanding the parallel financial plumbing that operates outside Washington's reach.

- Conviction: 42 / 100 (strengthening)
- Horizon: Emerging (watchlist)
- Tracking since: 2026-08-26T00:00:00.000Z
- Last updated: 2026-08-28T06:18:22.946Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/trends/secondary-sanctions-and-shadow-trade
- Publisher: Polylog
- Affected regions: Global

## Recent score history

- 2026-08-27: 38
- 2026-08-28: 42

## Recent evidence

- [confirms] US Treasury Sanctions Chinese and Hong Kong Firms Over Iran Trade While Sparing Major Banks (2026-08-26): The US Treasury designated roughly 60 entities over Iran trade, about 24 of them in mainland China or Hong Kong, while deliberately sparing major banks. Hitting intermediaries but not the settlement banks is the diminishing-returns pattern the thesis predicts: the trade migrates to new shell layers and non-dollar channels rather than stopping.