The European Council has adopted, unanimously, restrictive measures under Article 215 TFEU. All sovereign US Treasury holdings, Federal Reserve correspondent accounts and US government-controlled dollar clearing within EU jurisdiction are frozen with immediate effect.
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@small_biz_owner_pa · 20 Jan 2026 · 15:40
Nine person machine shop in Pennsylvania. I import a part from Stuttgart every six weeks.
My bank returned the payment this afternoon. Not blocked, not sanctioned — a compliance officer somewhere decided not to risk it.
That is forty percent of my order book sitting on a shelf in Germany. I am not a geopolitical actor. I make brackets.
5.6K replies
This is the mechanism, right here, in one shop.
Sanctions almost never bite because of the rule. They bite because ten thousand compliance officers all decide independently not to risk it, and there is no appeal against a decision nobody formally made.
I am sorry about your brackets. I mean that.
What was happening
20 January 2026 · in the recordEurope freezes the dollarTwenty-seven member states invoke Article 215 against the issuer of the reserve currency. Treasury holdings, Federal Reserve correspondent accounts, and dollar clearing inside EU j…