Sworn in on Wednesday, the new U.S. president, Joe Biden, has already reversed some of his predecessor’s most controversial policies on immigration, climate, and health. He’s also promised to re-engage with the Islamic Republic and picked some of the architects of the original pact for top policy posts.

Even if sanctions are eventually eased again, Iran’s road to recovery could be even more fraught this time around. Below are five charts that show how the Iranian economy changed during the Trump years:

Iran’s economy contracted sharply during the Trump years. Unable to export most of its oil due to the new sanctions, its government turned to other exports instead, making a big push to develop domestic manufacturing and expand trade with immediate neighbors. That helped offset some of the impacts. It also meant that by the time Covid-19 hit global oil demand last year, Iran was better primed to absorb the shock than fellow crude exporters.

The Iranian rial has lost 80 percent of its value against the dollar over the course of Trump’s presidency.

The biggest casualty of Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy was the Iranian rial, which lost about 80% of its value against the dollar, fueling inflation, devastating purchasing power, and pushing millions of families into poverty. Efforts to stabilize the currency by controlling the rate and prosecuting money changers backfired, weakening the rial further as the black market thrived.

Iranian equities surged as the rial weakened and options-starved investors looked for affordable bets.

As the rial lost value, stocks saw unprecedented gains. The main index on the Tehran Stock Exchange has risen more than 600% since January 2019 as record numbers of new investors sought to shield their savings from inflation. The market has already begun to lose value since Biden’s election on expectations that sanctions will ease and the rial will strengthen again.

Iran-EU Trade

The European Union was Iran’s biggest trade partner before the bloc imposed oil sanctions in 2012 over the country’s nuclear program. Since then, China has become Iran’s top destination for energy exports and the biggest source of imports. It has been the lone customer for Iranian crude since Trump’s sanctions came into force in 2018. While Europe’s tried to keep the nuclear deal alive, it struggled to maintain economic ties in the face of U.S. penalties.

Iran’s Oil Export

In May 2019, the Trump administration suspended sanctions waivers that had enabled Iran to keep selling oil to a select number of countries. That sent crude exports plunging to 290,000 barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, from about 2.6 million in January 2017, when Trump entered office. Iran has demanded the U.S. lift sanctions on its oil and banking industries as soon as possible and is preparing to increase production.

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“This mechanism is by no means a banking system in which money is supposed to be transferred, but rather a mechanism for trade exchanges in the form of bartering, and Europe’s goal is not to involve its banks.” the official explained.

Modoudi further noted that Iran’s foreign trade is mainly conducted with neighboring countries, and almost 85 percent of the country’s exports are to those neighbors plus China and India.

“That is why we do not have much dependence on Europeans. Even the share of East Asian countries in the remaining 15 percent of Iranian foreign trade is much more than that of Europe’s,” he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the TPO head mentioned INSTEX potential advantages for EU, saying “Europe’s exports to Iran are about 10 times higher than Iran’s exports to Europe, and it is clear that this mechanism would be more in favor of the European nations rather than in line with Iran’s interests.”

“By implementing INSTEX, the Europeans could at least maintain the flow of their own exports to Iran,” he said.

He finally pointed to Iran’s current trade and noted that the country’s current annual trade stands at nearly $50 billion, and this level of trade has been achieved without INSTEX.

According to the official, Iran is currently using a same mechanism for conducting trade with its neighbors and even if the INSTEX is not operational the impact on the country’s foreign trade wouldn’t be that significant.

More than a year ago, in May 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump formally pulled the United States out of the nuclear deal that was struck between Iran and world powers in July 2015.

Following Trump’s decision, in January 2019, France, Germany and Britain (known as the E3) introduced an Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) which was meant to facilitate legitimate trade between European economic operators and Iran in order to convince Iran to stay in the 2015 nuclear deal.

Since then, several rounds of talks were held and hundreds of hours of discussion were done on the subject. The Europe claimed many times that “the mechanism will be operational soon”, however so far the EU claims have been no more than a bunch of empty promises.

The Europeans’ repeated false promises finally worn Iran’s patience thin, so that earlier this month, Iran officially announced it will take the second step in reducing its commitments to the JCPOA, as the deadline Tehran set for the Europeans to protect Tehran against the U.S. sanctions ended on July 7.

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