Committee Markup: Russia’s WTO Accession and Granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations
Opening Statement of Ranking Member Sander Levin
Committee Markup: Russia’s WTO Accession and Granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations
(Remarks as Prepared)
Since our hearing on this issue in June action within the control of Congress has improved. Those of us who have been pressing for a bill that seeks to strengthen enforcement are pleased that our efforts came to fruition in the bipartisan outcome of the Senate Finance Committee’s markup last week.
Action within the control of Russia – most directly that related to Syria – has unfortunately not changed enough.
As we know, failing to grant PNTR does not prevent Russia from joining the WTO. They are scheduled to do so on Aug. 22 and our government has agreed to their accession agreement. Failing to act only prevents U.S. companies, workers, and farmers from gaining the benefits of Russia’s WTO membership.
There are serious outstanding trade issues we have with Russia – ranging from IPR enforcement to the rule of law. Russia’s WTO membership will help us to make progress on some of these issues. At the same time, Russia’s accession will not, by itself, fully solve these problems. We will need to continue to work actively to address these issues at every opportunity.
For example, without PNTR, if Russia would decide to massively subsidize a key industry, and those subsidies harm U.S. exporters, there is nothing we can do about it today. But with PNTR, we would be able to challenge those subsidies and either remove them or face WTO-sanctioned retaliation by the United States.
The bill before us today is much improved on enforcement. Among other things, it requires the Administration to report on Russia’s implementation of all of its WTO commitments and to describe the Administration’s plan to address any deficiencies. It establishes a new mechanism to gather and report information on bribery and corruption in Russia. And it requires the Administration to negotiate new agreements to address longstanding issues with IPR enforcement and barriers to U.S. agricultural exporters.
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Russian Activist Accuses Chief Investigator of Secret European Holdings
A Russian blogger and anticorruption activist who helped inspire street protests in Moscow last winter accused Russia’s chief federal investigator on Thursday of secretly owning real estate and other investments in Europe.
The allegation touched on the personal dealings of Aleksandr I. Bastrykin, a close aide to President Vladimir V. Putin and the director of the Investigative Committee, a high-level agency in the Russian government that coordinates criminal inquiries. It was apparently the most forceful retort yet by the opposition to a number of new laws strengthening the security services.
These laws, passed partly in response to the activism of the blogger, Aleksei A. Navalny, will be enforced by Mr. Bastrykin.
On his blog, Mr. Navalny provided documents indicating that Mr. Bastrykin has a residence permit and owns real estate in the Czech Republic.
Mr. Navalny wrote that the documents seemed to contradict Mr. Bastrykin’s denial of business interests abroad, which came in response to a parliamentary investigation in 2008.
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Editorial: political disqualification
The West’s Olympic boycott of Lukashenko is sending a clear signal to ex-Soviet dictatorships. The West isn’t holding out hope for democratization and has started to see them as the political heirs of the Soviet regime.
The London Olympics organization committee denied accreditation to Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko who also heads the National Olympics committee. May be the International Olympic Committee can still persuade the British authorities and the organization committee to reconsider, but for now the President of Belarus has no access to to the Games for political reasons.
USA and EU didn’t recognize the election results in Belarus in December 2010 when Lukashenko was reelected for a fourth term. The confrontation between the West and Belarus worsened after the protest rallies by those unhappy with the election results were brutally scattered, and afterwards several presidential candidates were sentenced to real prison time in show trials. Now there are several economic sanctions in effect against Belarus, initiated because there are political prisoners in Belarus. Moreover, Lukashenko and several Belarussian officials have been blacklisted from entry in EU and USA. This prohibition may be the formal reason for the denial of Lukashenko’s accreditation.
The Belarussian president evidently foresaw these events. Recently, when meeting the Belarus Olympic sportemen, Lukashenko lamented about the politicization of modern olympics. “This is politics, sometimes dirty politics,” he said. Nevertheless, he ordered his sportsmen to bring as many medals home as possible. And even altered the main Olympic principle “participation is more important than winning”: “It’s winning that’s important for us, not participation,” Lukashenko said.
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OVERNIGHT MONEY: Russia bill teed up for House panel’s approval
Opening trade with Russia: The House Ways and Means Committee will mark up and, most likely, approve bipartisan legislation on Thursday to grant permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to Russia.
Panel Democrats and Republicans agreed to push through a trade bill that mirrors the one approved last week by the Senate Finance Committee minus the human rights legislation.
That Senate bill got unexpectedly unanimous support for its measure that included the Magnitsky human-rights bill, which would punish Russian officials involved in the death of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison after reporting government corruption.
The House is expected to tack on the human-rights legislation in the Rules Committee before the measure heads to the floor.
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Business groups keep up pressure to pass Russia trade bill
Business groups are optimistic that Congress can clear legislation to normalize trade relations with Russia by next week, but intend to keep up the pressure until it’s done.
The Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday that repealing Jackson-Vanik and extending permanent normal trade relations to Moscow would provide a boost to the sagging economy.
The bill is feeding off the momentum from the Senate Finance Committee, which unanimously approved a measure last week that combines the repeal language with the human-rights legislation that would punish Russian officials involved in the death of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison after reporting government corruption.
Bill Miller, senior vice president of government affairs of BRT, called last week’s 24-0 vote “unprecedented” and is hoping that the House Ways and Means Committee will approve its bipartisan bill on Thursday and send it to the floor early next week.
“It looks like we are very close to getting Russia PNTR done,” Milller told reporters.
Passage in the House would give the Senate a chance to clear the bill for President Obama’s signature before Russia joins the World Trade Organization on Aug. 22.
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Turning the tables on Russia’s power elite — the story behind the Magnitsky Act
The murder of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009 looks likely to trigger legislation in the United States which strikes at the heart of Russia’s corrupt power elite. Bill Browder, founder of the Hermitage Fund, moving spirit behind the impending Magnitsky Act, tells the story.
I have my family history to blame for the fact that I ended up working in Moscow. My grandmother was from Russia and my grandfather was the head of the American Communist Party between 1932 and 1945 (he was subsequently persecuted in the 1950’s). So when I was growing up as a teenager and going through my teenage rebellion, I thought the best way of rebelling against a family of communists was to become a capitalist.
I ended up studying economics at the University of Chicago, probably the most right-wing institution in America, and then I enrolled at the Stanford Business School. I graduated business school the year the Berlin Wall came down and as I started contemplating the next stage of my life, I had a personal epiphany: ‘if my grandfather was the biggest communist in America, I should become the biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe’. So I set off to do just that.
After a spell working on the Russian privatisation programme at Salomon Brothers in London, I moved to Moscow in late 1995 to set up the Hermitage Fund, which focused on investing in the newly privatised shares of Russian companies. Over the next few years, the business grew to become the largest investment firm in the country with $4.5 billion. Success was exciting. But this turned to frustration when I realised that the companies I was investing in were essentially ‘non-profit’ entities. They were ‘non-profit’ not because they were giving money to charity, but because the senior managers were stealing the profits.
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US moves closer to Russia trade bill
The US Congress is set to take a big step towards approving normal trade relations with Russia, brushing off geopolitical tensions to deliver a victory for large US exporters such as Caterpillar and General Electric.
The Ways and Means committee of the House of Representatives is expected to vote on a bill, probably on Thursday, that would allow US companies to reap the benefits from Russia’s looming accession to the World Trade Organisation. The so-called Magnitsky bill – which seeks to punish Russian officials for human rights abuses – will be attached to the legislation.
With both Republican and Democratic leaders on the panel endorsing the package, it should pass comfortably. This would bolster the chances of it being enacted before the August congressional recess – as its supporters are hoping for – though it may not happen until September or later in the year.
“The prospects have improved dramatically”, said Ron Pollett, chief executive of GE Russia, who was in Washington last week to lobby for the bill. “It’s a question of when, not if.”
The bill would unwind the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a Cold War relic that barred trade with the Soviet Union for restricting Jewish emigration. Its provisions have routinely been waived, but its presence has continued to sour US economic relations with Russia.
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GOLDMAN’S MAGNITSKY ‘MONITORS’
The news that Wall Street megabank Goldman Sachs may have tried to torpedo a human rights bill pertaining to Russia provoked a reaction from the financial giant, which maintains it never paid a prominent D.C. lobbying firm $100,000 to rally opposition to the legislation.
The Free Beacon reported Thursday that Goldman had retained the services of the D.C.-based lobbying firm Duberstein Group Inc. Lobbying disclosure forms showed the firm lobbied against the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, named after the Russian lawyer who was tortured and killed by Russia officials after discovering a $230 million embezzlement plot.
After failing to respond to multiple requests for comment, a senior Goldman Sachs official contacted the Free Beacon to dispute the initial report.
“We have not engaged any firm including the Duberstein group to lobby on that provision,” Jake Siewert, head of corporate communications for Goldman Sachs, told the Free Beacon late Thursday.
Siewert, a former Clinton administration official and adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, would not detail the nature of his employer’s relationship with Duberstein, or explain on record why the Magnitsky measure was listed on the firm’s disclosure forms.
Pressed about the relationship, Siewert directed a reporter back to the Duberstein group.
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Obama lets Russia get away with murder
Last Thursday, the governments of Russia and China vetoed yet another United Nations Security Council resolution that would have put sanctions on the crumbling Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. The two authoritarian powers, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “are on the wrong side of history.”
This term has become a favorite expression of the Obama administration. In the past year, both Secretary of State Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice have used the language to describe Russian and Chinese intransigence against sanctioning Assad.
Correct as the description may be, however, it is trite coming from an administration that has lobbied hard to water down legislation aimed at putting pressure on Assad’s most important friend: Russian President-for-life Vladimir Putin. Indeed, while it continually castigates the Russians for opposing sanctions on Assad, it appears that the Obama administration, too, will be “on the wrong side of history.”
Last week, the Senate Finance Committee passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, named for the brave Russian lawyer who was arrested, tortured and killed by Russian authorities after exposing a $230 million tax fraud scheme perpetrated by the Kremlin. Magnitsky was denied medical treatment and subjected to worsening conditions and ever more squalid cells. He conveniently passed away in pretrial detention on Nov. 16, 2009, eight days before the one-year mark when the Russian government would have been forced to either try or release him.
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
