Unilateral trade sanctions restrict the access of American companies and goods to 40 percent of the world's population, says Donald V. Fites, chairman and chief executive officer of Caterpiller, Inc.

Unilateral sanctions have become the foreign policy weapon of choice in recent years:

• Since 1993, the United States has imposed more than 60 unilateral foreign policy sanctions covering 35 countries.

• And the trend is growing, with 26 new unilateral sanction measures introduced in the current Congress.

• To further complicate the matter, state and local governments are enacting their own trade restrictions. These sanctions aren't aimed just at obvious "rogue" regimes like Iraq and Libya, says Fite. In a growing number of cases, they target mainstream U.S. trading partners, including Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and even Switzerland.

Yet there is a wealth of evidence that these sanctions rarely achieve their goals and are frequently counterproductive.

• In 1995 alone, between 200,000 and 250,000 U.S. jobs were lost due to unilateral U.S. trade sanctions, according to a study by the Institute for International Economics.

• Unilateral sanctions reduced U.S. exports to 26 target countries by an estimated $15 billion to $20 billion annually.

• A 1994 Council on Competitiveness report found that just eight instances of unilateral sanctions cost the U.S. economy $6 billion in annual sales and 120,000 export- related jobs.

Trade accounts for more than 30 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. And more than 12 million jobs depend on U.S. exports and access to global markets.