Personally, I think a unilateral severing of economic ties would be extremely counterproductive. However, I think eliminating the policy compartmentalization between trade and human rights issues should be seriously considered. Basic democratic representation and de jure and de facto protection of basic human rights (or at least concrete and verifiable steps towards that goal) should be fundamental requirements for having an open trading relationship with any country. Then it's up the the human-rights abusing country to make the choice about whether it wants to trade or not.
My understanding is that many of these trading relationships were liberalized with the idea that trade would bring political liberalization and human rights with it. That idea has been shown to be false, so policy that's based on it should be reconsidered.