WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama issued an executive order Friday lifting long-standing U.S. trade sanctions against Myanmar, saying in a formal notification that the regime's pattern of using repressive tactics "has been significantly altered by Myanmar's substantial advances to promote democracy" over the past year. The move followed a meeting between Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Obama in Washington last month, when she called for the lifting of economic sanctions against her country, and he said he was willing to do this. Suu Kyi concurred it was time to remove all the sanctions that had hurt the economy and urged Americans to come to the country and “to make profits.”

The U.S. has already eased broad prohibitions on investment and trade but had retained more targeted restrictions on military-owned companies and officials and associates of the former ruling junta.
The Obama administration lifts U.S. sanctions on Myanmar by terminating an emergency order that deemed the policies of the former military government a threat to U.S. national security.