Posts Tagged ‘congress’
US Senate Committee Ties Jackson-Vanik to Magnitsky Bill
The United States Congress finance committee has linked a draft bill on repealing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and a change in Russia’s status to a free trade nation to the draft “Magnitsky bill,” the committee said on Wednesday.
A Senate vote on the joint law will take place in the next few hours.
“Committee Chairman Baucus released a modified mark of his bill to establish permanent normal trade relations with Russia and remove Russia from the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment,” a source in Washington told RIA Novosti. “The mark includes the Magnitsky Act, as passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
The text of the joint bill also has “small alterations,” on electronic trade, the source added.
The introduction of the combined bill to the committee is a technicality, as Baucus presented his draft bill to the Senate on July 12, and on July 14 a source in the committee administration confirmed to RIA Novosti that it would be this joint bill which would be put to the vote on Wednesday.
Several senators have already expressed strong support for the bill.
The new bill is a response to the demands of a majority of lawmakers for a review of legislation affecting trade and human rights issues, including some laws affecting trade with Russia.
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Russia Trade Bill Set to Advance in U.S. Senate, But Passage by August Recess Uncertain
A Senate panel appears headed to back Wednesday the lifting of trade restrictions on Russia, but the White House faces an uphill battle in its effort to win congressional approval before its long-time geopolitical rival joins the World Trade Organization as expected next month.
Several senators and private-sector supporters of legislation to approve permanent, normal trade relations with Russia said the bill is likely to clear its first major hurdle, by winning the backing of the Senate Finance Committee.
But a number of senators cast doubt on whether Congress can pass the bill before lawmakers leave town in early August for recess, raising the risk that U.S. companies will be put at a competitive disadvantage in trying to win Russian business. Rising tensions with Russia over Syria, Iran and human rights issues are complicating passage, with senators of both parties looking to attach measures to the trade bill to punish Russian human-rights violators.
“I’m very concerned about the human rights abuses and the bad behavior of Russia,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas.) Still, he and Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.), the minority whip, predicted the Finance Committee would approve the bill.
“I think things are fairly well resolved, that the (trade bill) would be accompanied by the Magnitsky legislation,” said Mr. Kyl. He was referring to a measure, named after a Russian lawyer who died in prison after accusing Russian government officials of fraud, that would freeze assets and deny visas to Russian human-rights abusers.
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Russia offers economic opportunity
U.S. exports to Russia total more than $9 billion per year. Repealing Jackson-Vanik and establishing PNTR could double that number in just five years, according to one recent study. That could mean thousands of new jobs across every sector of our economy. With the Russian economy’s impressive growth — it’s expected to outgrow Germany’s by 2029 — the long-run gains would be even greater.
Make no mistake, Russia is not without its problems — and they are stark in the foreign policy arena. Its support for the regimes in Syria and Iran remains an obstacle.
The death of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky also highlights troubling human rights problems. A bill known as the Magnitsky Act, sponsored by our colleagues Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and McCain , aims to address these human rights issues by sanctioning those responsible for Magnitsky’s death. It’s a crucial part of the debate surrounding our relationship with Russia — and should be approved together with PNTR.
It is important to understand that this debate is not a choice between improving conditions in Russia and increasing U.S. exports. These are not opposing goals — indeed, they support each other.
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In Trade Deal With Russia, U.S. Plans Sanctions for Human Rights Abuses
In the two decades since the end of the cold war, the United States has extended its economic reach to the far corners of the old Communist world, establishing full-fledged trade ties with the likes of Ukraine, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Even still-Communist nations like China and Vietnam have been granted full trading status. But not Russia.
That seems about to change. For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, a bipartisan coalition in Congress has agreed to normalize trade relations with Russia, the onetime adversary in the long struggle between capitalism and communism. But at a time of renewed tension with Moscow, lawmakers have decided to grant the status with one large caveat — that Russian officials be held responsible for human rights abuses.
Legislation moving through the House and Senate with support from both parties would lift restrictions imposed in the 1970s under the so-called Jackson-Vanik law, permanently establishing normal trade relations with Russia, one of just a handful of nations left in the world still denied them. In doing so, Congress would potentially double Russian-American trade and fulfill a goal that eluded Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Yet in imposing sanctions for human rights violations, lawmakers are defying not just the Kremlin of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, but also President Obama, who while embracing the normalization of trade lobbied against mixing the issues. In effect, foreign policy experts said, the legislation represents a judgment by Congress that in his effort to repair relations with Moscow, Mr. Obama has not paid enough attention to freedom and democracy.
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U.S., Russia try to reset and retrench relations, but Magnitsky bill threatens process
The visit of a multimillionaire Russian senator to the United States last week was difficult, upbeat and contradictory — the very image of the reset-retrench relationship between the two countries.
Vitaly Malkin was in Washington to confront Congress over the Magnitsky bill, which would put Russians connected with human rights abuses on a blacklist, denying them U.S. visas and freezing their assets.
The bill has infuriated Russian officials, and they speak about it often and with vehemence. “We really don’t want the U.S. Congress to adopt this bill, which has the potential to deteriorate U.S.-Russia relations for years, or even for decades, to come,” Malkin said at a news conference last Wednesday.
But the day before found him at the Open World office at the Library of Congress, posing for a friendly photo with James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, and discussing his commitment of more than $1 million to the U.S. government-run Open World program. Malkin’s money helps send prospective leaders from his constituency on exchanges to the United States to learn about good governance, rule of law and other highlights of democracy.
While Malkin and three colleagues from the upper house of parliament were in the United States, Russia’s lower house was adopting a law requiring non-governmental organizations that accept foreign money and engage in election monitoring, human rights advocacy and corruption fighting to declare themselves as foreign agents.
Russian activists say the foreign agent law, which the upper house, the Federation Council, is expected to rubber-stamp this week, was pushed along in retaliation for the Magnitsky bill.
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Last-ditch effort backfires on Magnitsky
Russian lawmakers urged Congress last week to reconsider the Magnitsky bill, but so far have gotten the opposite result. If passed, the Magnitsky bill could derail US-Russian relations for years Russian Senators said.
Several members of Russia’s Senate, called the Federation Council, made a rare appearance in Washington, D.C., this past week in a last-ditch effort to convince their American peers to reconsider the controversial Magnitsky Bill—a piece of legislation that Moscow considers to be explicit interference in the internal affairs of the country.
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign affairs has repeatedly warned Washington about the consequences of this legislation. The Magnitsky Bill sanctions a number of the Russian officials that the U.S. Congress has deemed responsible for or are connected to the case.
In 2008, Sergei Magnitsky said that he had uncovered a scheme that top officials from Russia’s Interior Ministry and other agencies had created a plan to defraud the Russian government. Two of the officials turned around and implicated him for tax evasion on behalf of his client, the investment firm Hermitage Capital headed by William Browder, then a longtime cheerleader for President Vladimir Putin.
Magnitsky died after a year in pre-trial detention, during which his health deteriorated dramatically; Russian investigators found he had been beaten while in prison. While the Russian government has stressed that any human rights investigations should be conducted internally, Browder has headed an international investigation of his own and become one of Putin’s fiercest critics.
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Magnistkiy’s mother demands explanations about senators’ US visit
The mother of Hermitage Capital legal consultant Sergey Magnitskiy, who died in pre-trial detention in Moscow, has accused Federation Council members who visited Washington last week of defaming her son.
According to a Hermitage Capital press release received by Interfax on Monday [16 June], Natalya Magnitskaya has written an open letter to Federation Council chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko “demanding an objective assessment of the defamation campaign against the slain lawyer, executed by four Russian senators last week in Washington who were trying to stop the adoption of the Magnitskiy law by US Congress where the bill will be discussed this Wednesday, 18 July, at the Senate finance committee”.
“I believe that this attempt to posthumously besmirch the good name of my son looks shameful and is not worthy of the high title of a people’s representative. Abusing their status, these people permitted themselves to insult the memory of my son. They used the fact that my son is not able to defend himself,” the fund’s press service quoted the text of the letter as saying.
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The Sergei Magnitsky bill
When Congress takes the lead on foreign policy the result is not usually optimal. Some worry that America’s first branch of government is about to add to its dubious record with passage of the Magnitsky bill – named after the Russian lawyer who died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after having exposed massive corruption.
There are reasons to worry Congress may be overreaching. But the bill should not be discarded. Russia may be an indispensable, if frequently obstructive, international partner. But at home its government sometimes behaves like a criminal enterprise. The treatment of Sergei Magnitsky is one such instance.
There are two main objections to the bill in its latest form. Neither is insuperable. The first concerns the need to accommodate Russia’s recent entry into the World Trade Organisation, which is a White House priority in what remains of this Congress. In order to comply with WTO rules, the US has to scrap the 1974 Jackson-Vanik law, which linked the Soviet Union’s trade access to human rights benchmarks, notably its treatment of Jewish “refuseniks”. The law lost its purpose after the USSR’s collapse in 1991.
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Baucus Announces Markup of Jobs Bill Establishing Permanent Normal Trade Relations with Russia
US Senate Committee on Finance
With Russia Joining the WTO, Finance Chairman’s Mark Will Enable U.S. Businesses to Capitalize on Increased Market Access.
Washington, DC – Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) today released his Chairman’s Mark of a bill to establish permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia and remove Russia from the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which will enable U.S. businesses to capitalize on Russia’s growing market. Baucus also scheduled a markup to take place at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 18,in Room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Baucus’s bill would support and create thousands of U.S. jobs across every sector of the American economy, including manufacturing, agriculture and services, by helping double U.S. exports to Russia within five years.
“Increasing our exports to Russia will help create new jobs and give America’s economy the shot in the arm it needs. Our exports to Russia will double within the next five years if we pass PNTR soon, which will mean thousands of jobs supported or created across the country. And this economic boost will come at no cost to us whatsoever. We will not have to change one single tariff or trade law,” Baucus said. “Russia is joining the WTO no matter what Congress does – their legislature has already voted and put the wheels in motion – so we need to act soon. My bill will put American businesses, farmers, ranchers and workers in a position to succeed and grow, and that’s exactly what our economy and workers need.”
Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, recently approved an agreement to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Russia’s upper house, the Federation Council, is expected to take up the measure soon, after which Russia will officially join the WTO 30 days later. As part of the “accession” process, as it is known, Russia will lower tariffs and increase market access for foreign businesses from countries with which it has permanent normal trade relations. Congress must pass legislation establishing PNTR by the time Russia joins the WTO for U.S. businesses to see the full economic benefits of the deal.
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