The Trump administration on Friday placed the International Criminal Court under sanctions as an institution, adding the Hague tribunal to the Treasury Department's list of blocked entities. Until now, Washington had singled out the court's prosecutors and judges; the new designation reaches the court itself and could leave companies that serve it open to penalties.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled the measure hours after Navi Pillay, a South African jurist who sat on the court's appeals chamber from 2003 to 2008, won the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize committee's citation said the choice was meant to "issue a reminder" at a time when "judges and institutions of international law are under political attack." The Associated Press reported that the administration's move "long predated the Nobel Prize announcement."
"President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans," Rubio said in a statement. "That is why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court." In a video on social media, he said the government would "ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us."
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control placed the court on its Specially Designated Nationals list under Executive Order 14203 and issued four general licenses shortly after the announcement. They authorize certain transactions involving the court, along with dealings tied to its telecommunications and enterprise software, pension payments and some of its detainees.
According to the AP, the sanctions block any assets the court may have in U.S. jurisdictions and give American companies and individuals six months to unwind their business with it. One of the licenses lets certain transactions with the court continue until April 7, 2027, including payments for staff salaries, health insurance, rent and utilities, the Spanish news site Demócrata reported. U.S. sanctions generally bar American companies from working with a designated organization, Reuters noted, which in practice means banks closing accounts, insurers canceling coverage and software vendors cutting off service.
Rubio said the administration had held off on the step in hopes that the court and the countries that belong to it would address American concerns, and that they had failed to do so. "We have structured this action to provide an opportunity for States Parties to negotiate and present a solution to address our concerns," he said. "If these efforts do not bear fruit, we will continue to adjust accordingly."
He also called on allies that belong to the court, a group the AP said includes many European NATO members and Japan, to restrain it, noting that many of them depend on American troops for their defense. "Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC," Rubio said. If allies do not act, he said, the United States will keep working to dismantle the court "piece by piece, until Americans are threatened no longer."
Rubio cast opposition to the court as bipartisan. "Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all," he said. In remarks quoted by the New York Post, he said the court wants "to prosecute Border Patrol agents that are protecting our nation's borders" and to go after elected American leaders.
The United States is not a member of the court, and Washington has denounced it over arrest warrants for Israeli officials, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and over a past investigation of American soldiers' conduct in Afghanistan that the court has since closed. Trump's first administration also sanctioned court officials, a step that was reversed under President Joe Biden. In February 2025, the administration sanctioned Karim Khan, then the court's prosecutor, and starting that June it extended sanctions to more than half a dozen court officials.
Nazhat Shameem Khan, the court's deputy prosecutor, said in an interview with Reuters that the sanctions "must be condemned." "The sanctions are intended to undermine the rule of law internationally and the work that an independent judicial institution is doing," Shameem Khan said. "Our work will continue across all our situations, our investigations and our prosecutions."
Court officials have spent months preparing for sanctions on the institution, Reuters reported, replacing Microsoft programs on staff computers with open-source alternatives and reworking the court's banking and health insurance arrangements. Earlier this week, the court's registrar, Osvaldo Zavala Giler, urged the European Union to be ready to invoke its blocking mechanism, a tool that allows the bloc to protect European countries against the extraterritorial reach of another government's sanctions.