[michaelt]

Sovereignty means having the power to make or change any law.

And our elected leaders should have that power so that bad laws can be fixed.

Imagine if, in pre-civil-war America a lot of British investors had invested in cotton plantations whose profitability depended on slavery. Should Lincoln have said "gee, I guess my hands are tied, banning slavery would be bad for our foreign investors" and done nothing?

You might argue that in the past we had bad laws, but we don't have bad laws any more and all our laws are perfect. But the fact we still employ legislators rather implies we think we might need some legislating done.

[_yosefk]

Sovereignty means that you have a monopoly on using force within your borders. When you infringe on the interests of foreigners, the foreign sovereign might have objections, and I don't understand how this fact is inconsistent with your sovereignty.

Whether your infringement upon the foreigners' interest is good or bad is an entirely separate question, all I'm saying is that sovereignty does not grant you the ability to automatically get away with it and I don't understand why this word became so fashionable in this context recently (a similar example is defaulting on sovereign debt.)