The article is devoted to the question: how effective is lobbying as an instrument of U.S. sanctions removal? The main method is panel data random effects logistic regression. Panel data include 25 countries which have been under U.S. sanctions from 2001 to 2017. Dependent variable is sanctions status (present, absent). Independent variables are: number of consulting contracts in each year for each country, total amount of consulting spending in each year for each country, GDP, Polity 4, corruption perception index, presence of state sponsors of terrorism list. Binary logit is used because of binary dependent variable, random effects are used because of lack of variability in dependent variable for certain countries. Main conclusions: first, lobbying plays no statistically significant role in removal of sanctions, second, the bigger the GDP of a country, the less likely it gets under U.S. sanctions, third, presence on the list of state sponsors of terrorism reduces the likelihood of sanctions removal.