Farmers, businessmen and scholars call them self-defeating
President Reagan's economic retaliation against the Soviet Union for its role in the Polish crisis is raising anew some time-worn questions. Do such sanctions work? Are they at best only symbolic? Are they perhaps misguided missiles that ultimately inflict more damage on the country imposing them than on the target nation?
Farmers are among the loudest skeptics. They fear that Reagan will go further and impose a new embargo on grain shipments, which would swell the U.S. agricultural surplus and depress farm prices and incomes. Their concern...