Posts Tagged ‘WTO’
U.S. trade bill “not a gift” for Russia, Kirk says
The top U.S. trade official on Wednesday urged Congress to quickly approve legislation to improve trade ties with Russia, unencumbered by human rights requirements, saying it was vital to keep U.S. exports competitive in the Russian market.
“Authorizing the president to provide permanent normal trade relations is not a gift to Russia,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in testimony to the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.
Taking that action would ensure that U.S. companies “have the opportunity to enjoy all of the benefits” of Russia’s upcoming entry into the World Trade Organization, which is expected by August 22, Kirk said.
Kirk urged Congress to pass a “clean bill that enables us to maintain our competitive edge,” in reference to the desire of many lawmakers to attach human rights legislation.
Trade relations between the United States and Russia have been governed since 1974 by a human rights provision known as the Jackson-Vanik amendment.
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Rep. Brady Says Passing PNTR for Russia Is ‘Doable’This Summer, but a Hard Lift
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) June 19 said that passing legislation allowing permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status for Russia was “doable” by this summer although it would be a “hard lift.”
Brady also said he would prefer to see Russia PNTR legislation and a bill addressing Russian human rights concerns move separately.
“There’s no question passing PNTR for Russia is definitely doable, and it is doable this summer,” Brady said in a keynote address at a Peterson Institute for International Economics conference. “But there must be a meeting of the minds on the strategy, just as you do for every trade agreement.”
Brady said that the White House must ramp up its efforts to convince Congress to approve PNTR for Russia before it accedes to the World Trade Organization, adding that administration officials would have an opportunity to make the case at a June 20 hearing of the full Ways and Means Committee.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), International Trade Subcommittee ranking member John Thune (R-S.D.), Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), and Armed Services Committee ranking member John McCain (R-Ariz.) recently introduced legislation (S. 3285) to terminate the application of Title IV of the Trade Act of 1974 to Russia so the president can grant PNTR (113 DER A-30, 6/13/12). At that time, Baucus and Kerry simultaneously unveiled their strategy of advancing human rights legislation along with the trade bill by adding the full text of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (S. 1039) as an amendment to the bill that would terminate Title IV of the 1974 Trade Act.
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Senate Committee Postpones Vote on Magnitsky Bill
A Senate committee postponed a vote Tuesday that would punish Russian human-rights violators, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee delayed the vote on the so-called “Magnitsky” bill, named for the lawyer who died in a Russian prison in 2009 after accusing government officials of fraud, on the request of an unspecified committee member.
“There will not be a vote on the Magnitsky bill at today’s business meeting,” said Jodi Seth, a committee aide, confirming the report to Corruption Currents. “We have not yet scheduled the next business meeting, which is when the bill would be brought back up.”
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Vote on Russia human-rights bill postponed
A Senate panel postponed a vote on a Russian human-rights bill until next Tuesday after a panel member asked for a delay.
Under the Foreign Relations Committee’s rules, any member can anonymously request a holdover until the panel’s next business meeting. The delay comes the day after President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a frosty meeting at the Group of 20 summit in Mexico.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the bill’s Senate sponsor, said he didn’t think the delay had anything to do with the Obama-Putin meeting or the White House’s concerns with the bill. He said he expects it to pass the House and Senate.
“I am very confident that they’re not delaying our action,” Cardin said. “Doesn’t mean they’re supporting our action.
“We’ve been working very closely with the Obama administration. They’ve been very much engaged in what we’re doing.”
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Key religious group supports human-rights measure linked to Russia trade
Support for linking a human rights measure to an upcoming Russia trade bill got an important boost Monday when a key Jewish rights group announced it is backing the bill.
Normal trade relations with Russia is currently conditioned on Russia allowing its Jewish citizens to emigrate. It is subject to an outdated measure known as the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was applied in the mid-1980s and which no one thinks is still relevant.
The Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, which backed the initial Jackson-Vanik tie, is now advocating for a new human-rights measure meant to punish those responsible for the death of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.
The bill, which would subject Russian human-rights abusers to financial sanctions, is opposed by some in the business community who worry it will inadvertently subject U.S. firms that do business in Russia to penalties.
UCSJ joined other religious group on a letter last week to members of Congress urging them to support the Magnitsky bill.
“Among other things, we support this legislation because it specifically targets officials who abuse human rights with effective travel and financial sanctions,” the groups said.
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Punish the Russian abusers
Washington Post
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S hopes of forging a partnership with Vladimir Putin after his return to the Russian presidency appear to be fading fast. With a meeting between the two presidents due Monday, Russia is rebuffing U.S. appeals for cooperation in stopping the massacres in Syria, while continuing to supply the regime of Bashar al-Assad with weapons. Meanwhile the Kremlin is cracking down on Russians seeking democratic reform or fighting corruption. This month a prominent journalist was forced to flee the country after a senior government official reportedly threatened to kill him.
Apart from occasional public expressions of exasperation, the administration isn’t reacting much to the cold wind from Moscow. Instead it is pressing Congress to pass a piece of legislation much sought by Mr. Putin: repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which conditions trade preferences for Russia on free emigration. On its face the repeal makes sense; if the law is not changed, U.S. companies will be disadvantaged when Russia joins the World Trade Organization this summer. But a bill that grants Russia trade preferences and removes human rights conditions hardly seems the right response to Mr. Putin’s recent behavior.
That’s why momentum in Congress appears to be swinging behind a bipartisan initiative to couple the Jackson-Vanik repeal with a new human rights provision. The Magnitsky act, whose prime author has been Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), would sanction Russian officials “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
The bill is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who uncovered a $230 million embezzlement scheme by Russia tax and interior ministry officials, then was imprisoned by those same officials and subjected to mistreatment that led to his death. The bill is due to be taken up Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and could later be attached to the Russia trade bill under a deal struck between Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The appeal of the legislation is its sharp focus: It will affect only those found to be involved in Mr. Magnitsky’s death or the mistreatment of other Russians fighting corruption or abuses of human rights. It would punish people like the senior law enforcement official who allegedly threatened to kill Sergei Sokolov of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, then appoint himself investigator of the crime. Those sanctioned will be denied the U.S. visas they prize, and their dollar bank accounts — often used to siphon illicit gains out of the country — will be frozen. Importantly, their names will be published, which could make them pariahs elsewhere in the West.
Aware that the Magnitsky bill is needed to pass the trade legislation, the administration has been seeking to gut the former by introducing language that would allow the State Department to waive sanctions or the publication of names on national security grounds. Some waiver authority may be appropriate if it is narrowly cast; senators are considering a provision that would allow the names of some of those sanctioned to be classified temporarily on a case-by-case basis. What’s most important is that Congress send Mr. Putin and his cadres the message that their lawless behavior will have consequences. онлайн займы срочный займ на карту онлайн https://zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php быстрые займы на карту
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The Magnitsky Act and Implications for Russia-U.S. Relations
Throughout the Cold War the U.S. Congress sought to penalize the Soviet Union for its human rights record. Legislation such as the Jackson-Vanik amendment became a long-term influence on bilateral trade between the two countries. That tradition was reinvigorated this past week, when the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, in a rare example of bipartisanship. This has potentially important implications for future of bilateral trade with Russia, which is expected to join the World Trade Organization later this year. Passage of the Act just prior to President Obama’s meeting with President Putin in Mexico this coming week adds greater complexity to the cooling bilateral relationship between Russia and the U.S., and enhances the prospect of further deterioration.
The Act is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer representing Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund and asset management company that was dismantled by Russian authorities after it was accused of tax evasion. Magnitsky implicated top officials in a $230 million tax refund fraud against the Russian government. In 2008 he was arrested and died in prison after spending a year in pretrial detention; the case against him is ongoing posthumously. The U.S. State Department issued visa bans on several dozen Russian officials in connection to the Magnitsky case in 2011. Russia imposed travel bans on several U.S. officials in response.
After the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s approval of the bill, two additional committees (most likely the finance and judiciary committees since it deals with financial sanctions and criminal prosecution) must approve the bill or waive jurisdiction. Once passed in the House, the Senate is expected to introduce its own version of the bill for review.
The Obama administration has been opposed to the Act for two reasons, arguing that it will put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage in Russia, making it harder for them to compete, and possibly prompting the Russian government to favor non-U.S. suppliers or freeze U.S. corporate assets in the country. Adoption of the Act may also be inconsistent, if not oppositional, to another bill, which would grant Russia Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) as required under WTO rules.
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Russia Bans 11 U.S. Officials Over Guantanamo And Abu Ghraib
Russia barred 11 serving and former U.S. administration officials for human rights abuses at facilities including Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The ban on entry to Russia was enacted last year in retaliation for a U.S. visa ban for 11 Russian officials accused of playing a role in the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said in an e-mailed statement.
“These people are linked to high-profile human rights abuses, including torture and abuse of detainees in special prisons set up by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in Guantanamo, Bagram in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq,” Ushakov said. Russia hadn’t previously made public the exact nature of its response to the U.S. visa ban, which was announced in July last year.
Russia is warning of further steps if Congress passes a law that would impose U.S. travel and financial curbs on any official abusing human rights in Russia, including all 60 people suspected of involvement in Magnitsky’s death in a Moscow jail in 2009. Ushakov criticized what he termed as an “anti- Russian” step that would complicate ties as Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama prepare to meet on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Mexico.
The U.S. Supreme Court in December 2009 refused to revive a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other military leaders by four British men who said they were tortured while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, a detention center at the U.S. military base in Cuba. Abu Ghraib photographs showing U.S. guards mistreating inmates surfaced in 2004.
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Living with Putin, again
On the margin of the G20 summit later this month Russia’s new (but also old) president, Vladimir Putin, will meet America’s Barack Obama for the first time since his election in March. The atmosphere is likely to be chilly. That is as it should be, for since his decision last autumn to return to the Kremlin, Mr Putin has been stridently negative and anti-Western, most recently over Syria (see article). Such behaviour demands a stiff response from the West.
When Mr Obama came to power, his administration talked of a “reset” in relations with Russia. This new, friendlier approach had some useful consequences. It enabled America to negotiate and ratify a strategic arms-reduction treaty. It helped to bring about a slightly more constructive Russian attitude to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And it secured Russia’s imminent entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Just as with China a decade ago, WTO membership should press Russia to compete more openly and fairly in world markets and to abide more closely by international trade rules.
But the reset was based in part on two misplaced hopes: that Dmitry Medvedev, who had been lent the presidency for one term by Mr Putin in 2008, would genuinely take charge of the country, and that some in his government had sound liberalising, pro-Western instincts. Those hopes were dashed by Mr Putin’s swatting aside of Mr Medvedev last September to allow his own return to the Kremlin, the rigging of elections, his crackdown on Moscow’s protesters and his new Nyet posture.
This should not lead to a total rupture with Russia. Constructive engagement should continue on the economic front. With the oil price falling, stronger economic ties to the West could help to create a business constituency inside Russia that sees the need for greater liberalisation to keep the economy growing. The West should certainly look at introducing reasonable visa rules for Russian businesspeople (Britain’s are absurdly tough). Other cold-war relics, such as America’s Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions, should also go. And why not dangle in front of the bauble-loving Mr Putin the prospect of Russian membership of the OECD rich-country club? Or a free-trade agreement with the European Union?
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