Posts Tagged ‘WTO’
Baucus to pair Russian trade bill with Magnitsky human rights measure
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is linking support for increased trade with Russia to a human rights bill that could punish Russian officials.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on Tuesday announced in a letter he backs a plan to pair legislation granting normal trade relations with Russia with the so-called Magnitsky legislation that would freeze assets and deny U.S. visas to Russian officials linked to human rights abuses.
The bill is named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died while in police custody.
Russia is strongly opposed to the Magnitsky bill and has warned its passage would cool relations with the U.S. and could lead to retaliation. The Obama administration does not support the legislation.
Multinational companies have also expressed alarm at the Magnitsky bill, fearing it could result in sanctions on their businesses.
But Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and other supporters of the bill argue the U.S. must take a tougher stand against human rights abuses in Russia. They hope to force the issue by paring the bill with legislation granting Russia permanent normal trade relations, a requirement for the U.S. with Russia’s entry to the World Trade Organization.
If the U.S. does not grant Russia the improved trade status, Russia could impose higher tariffs on U.S. products.
Baucus’s letter to Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said he backs their position that passage of permanent normal trade relations for Russia is contingent upon passage of the Magnitsky bil.
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Human rights concerns complicate efforts to ramp up Russia trade
The Hill
Congress, the Obama administration and business groups are ramping up efforts to pave the way this summer for improved trade relations with Russia, but that work is being complicated by parallel efforts to address human rights concerns in that country.
While the push is being made to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment and grant permanent normal trade relations, some lawmakers are also eager to pass a measure designed to signal to Moscow that human rights and national security violations won’t be tolerated as that nation prepares to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).
In the ever complicated realm of U.S.-Russia relations, supporters of repealing Jackson-Vanik — a 37-year-old provision designed to put pressure on Communist nations for human-rights abuses and emigration policies — are emphasizing that Russia’s entry into the WTO does not require the U.S. to pass any additional measures .
The United States gives up nothing and won’t be required to change its laws, said Edward Gerwin, senior fellow for trade and global economic policy at Third Way, told The Hill.
Not only are normal trade relations denied to nations that restrict emigration, but without a repeal, U.S. businesses would lose the benefits derived from a more open Russian market, putting companies at a competitive disadvantage.
We’re not rewarding the Russians, Gerwin said. From a policy standpoint keeping Jackson-Vanik doesn’t get us anywhere, he said.
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Pass the Magnitsky Bill
I don’t often agree with Elliott Abrams against the Obama Administration — but the Magnitsky bill creates strange bedfellows.
The bill is named after a young Russian lawyer, who was tortured and died in prison for trying to blow the whistle on government fraud. It would impose travel bans to the U.S. and financial sanctions on anyone responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture or other gross violations of human-rights against individuals trying to defend human rights or who are seeking to expose illegal activity carried out by officials of the Russian government.
Sounds pretty important in a country that has become one of the leading murderers of journalists, and that is trail blazing the 21st century version of authoritarianism at home, and support for noxious regimes like Syria abroad. And by pinpointing sanctions against those carrying out abuse, it takes a page out of the smart sanctions book that has improved our leverage against countries by letting us target the real wrongdoers, not the general public.
But the Magnitsky bill is even more vital. The Administration wants Russia to join the World Trade Organization. To do that, we need to drop the Cold War Jackson-Vanik legislation that tied trade to allowing Jews and those persecuted by the former Soviet Union to emigrate — since linking issues that way is against WTO rules. This bill lets us get at human rights in Russia another way.
The Administration isn’t supportive — and that’s a real missed opportunity. Research on organizations like the WTO show that they allow outside countries to exercise immense leverage on domestic issues — but only during the negotiation stage. In other words, we can use the WTO to push Russia for some real reforms in its rule of law — but as soon as they are in, we lose that leverage.
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U.S.–Russia Trade and the Magnitsky Act
Today, the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (H.R. 4405), a measure designed to promote human rights in Russia. The committee’s vote has important implications for both human rights and international trade.
In a few months, Russia will become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). U.S. businesses will not be able to benefit from the concessions Russia made to join the WTO unless Congress first repeals the Jackson–Vanik Amendment, a powerful tool that the U.S. successfully used to promote human rights in Soviet Russia and other countries that restricted emigration during the Cold War. Failure to repeal Jackson–Vanik could place U.S. companies at a disadvantage while other WTO members benefit from significantly increased access to the Russian economy.
Regrettably, the Obama Administration did not work with Congress to resolve these issues before agreeing to Russia’s accession to the WTO. Now, Russian accession will put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage in Russia until Congress repeals Jackson–Vanik.
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US House Panel Approves Magnitsky Bill
A U.S. House committee approved legislation — without debate — that would punish Russian human-rights violators.
The legislation was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management who has been lionized around the world as a martyr and a whistleblower after he made allegations of a huge fraud scandal in Russia and died while in the hands of Russian authorities.
The scandal involved the alleged theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from Hermitage by Russian police, tax officials and others. Magnitsky had testified to Russian prosecutors in October 2008 but he was arrested and remanded to the very officials he accused in his testimony.
As the scandal unfolded, the U.S. created a secret visa blacklist of those it said were involved in the case. Moscow responded with its own list. The bill would make the U.S. list public, broaden it to include other human-rights abusers and ban those on the list from banking at U.S. financial institutions.
Russia has vowed to retaliate if the legislation becomes law, though it faces an uncertain future in an election year, according to a Dow Jones Newswires report.
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A bill that cracks down on Russian corruption
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled today to take up the most consequential piece of legislation in years related to Russia: the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. With strong bipartisan support, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), the Magnitsky bill is the most serious U.S. effort to address human rights and the rule of law in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The legislation is named after the 37-year-old lawyer who was jailed unjustly in 2008 after exposing a massive tax fraud by officials of Russia’s Interior Ministry. While in jail for almost a year, Magnitsky became ill but was denied medical treatment. In the end he was brutally beaten and left to die.
The proposed legislation is not about one man, however. It is about a Russian system choking on corruption, illegality and abuse. The new law would impose a visa ban and asset freeze against theofficials responsible not only for Magnitsky’s murder but also for other human rights abuses, including against individuals who “expose illegal activity” carried out by Russian officials or who seek to “defend or promote internationally recognized human rights and freedoms.” This includes journalists who have been murdered when they have dug too close to powerful officials or oligarchs. It includes human rights activists who have been beaten and crippled or killed for exposing the mistreatment of their fellow Russians.
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US companies alarmed by Russia sanctions bill
The Hill
American companies are worried that human-rights legislation being linked to a must-pass Russian trade bill could wind up sanctioning them and their business interests.
On Tuesday, the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) and sister group USA Engage publicly came out against the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which will be marked up in the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday and is moving in the Senate.
The groups said that, in addition to hurting U.S.-Russian relations, the bill would expose American companies to the risk of having their assets frozen.
The bill was drafted in response to the death, in prison, of Russian whistleblower Magnitsky.
Congressional sponsors want the bill linked with or incorporated into another bill granting Russia permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status, something the United States wants to do by August, when Russia is to join the World Trade Organization. Unless trade relations are normalized by then, U.S. exports to Russia would face higher tariffs than those from other nations.
The sanctions proposal has businesses balancing the possibility of heightened Russian trade barriers against the risk of being ensnared in a new U.S. sanctions regime.
As drafted, the sanctions bill goes beyond punishing the alleged killers of Magnitsky. It would set up a public list of persons responsible for “gross human-rights violations.” Persons, or “entities,” on the list would be denied visas to the United States or have their assets frozen.
The NFTC said the bill “would include subsidiaries of foreign companies incorporated in the United States whose parent’s conduct anywhere in the world would cause them to be sanctioned based on an opaque and unspecified process.”
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US business warns against Russian sanctions bill
A bill to punish Russian officials for alleged human rights abuses would badly damage U.S.-Russian ties and hurt U.S. exports, business groups said on Tuesday, two days before a key congressional panel will vote on the measure.
The bill would require the United States to deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians linked to the detention and death of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-graft lawyer who died in a Russian jail in 2009 under suspicious circumstances.
The legislation is expected to win approval on Thursday in the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee, clearing the way for the full House to take up the measure, either on its own or part of a trade bill.
Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, whose members include major U.S. exporters such as Boeing, Microsoft and Caterpillar, told reporters on Tuesday the Magnitsky bill was “seriously flawed.”
He argued it would make it even harder to get Russia’s cooperation on issues ranging from Iran’s nuclear ambitions to Syria’s bloody crackdown on dissent.
U.S. companies also fear they will lose sales coming from Russia’s entry into the WTO because Moscow will retaliate by turning to other suppliers, Reinsch said.
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House takes lead on Russian human-rights bill
The House Foreign Affairs Committee this week will become the first panel to vote on human-rights legislation that lawmakers of both parties say is a precondition to normalizing trade relations with Russia.
The panel is scheduled to mark up the so-called Magnitsky bill, sponsored by U.S. Congressional Human Rights Commission co-chairman Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), on Thursday. The bill has the support of committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and is expected to easily pass the House despite Russian threats of retaliation.
“If this new anti-Russian law is adopted, then of course that demands measures in response,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Yuri Ushakov said last week.
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