Jackson–Vanik amendment

The Jackson–Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974 is a 1974 provision in United States federal law intended to affect U.S. trade relations with countries with non-market economies (originally, countries of the Soviet Bloc) that restricted freedom of emigration and other human rights. The amendment is contained in the Trade Act of 1974 which passed both houses of the United States Congress unanimously, and was signed by President Gerald Ford into law, with the adopted amendment, on January 3, 1975. Over time, a number of countries were granted conditional normal trade relations subject to annual review, and a number of countries were liberated from the amendment.

On December 14, 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act (formally titled the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012) that repealed the application of the Jackson–Vanik amendment to Russia and gave normal US trade relations to Russia and Moldova, instead punishing individuals violating human rights.

The amendment is named after its major co-sponsors Henry M. Jackson of Washington in the Senate and Charles A. Vanik of Ohio in the House of Representatives, both Democrats.

Background

Soviet Emigration Policy

Emigration from the Soviet Bloc was severely restricted for all citizens, regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religion.

Jews were among a small number of minorities that enjoyed an exception to this rule.

Timeline

From 1972 to January 1975, Congress debated and added the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, which had restricted the president's ability to provide most favored nation (MFN) status to the Soviet Union and other non-market economies of the Soviet bloc. The timing and provisions of the amendment reflected the presidential ambitions and distrust of the Soviet Union of Senator Henry Jackson (D-WA).

After the Soviet Union allowed a number of Soviet Jews to emigrate in the years after the 1967 June War in the Middle East, expectations of freer emigration to buttress Jewish settlers to Israel were raised, but they were soon shattered as the 1972 Soviet emigration head tax made emigration very difficult.

This Soviet edict levied an additional exit tax on educated emigrants, which was felt most significantly by Jews who were provided with state-funded education and housing. The education tax, imposed after the 1972 Moscow summit of superpower leaders Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, emboldened those who criticized the Nixon administration's policy of detente for downplaying concerns for human rights.

At first, Jackson organized the political movement to link trade and emigration in US relations with the Soviet Union in concert with Jewish activists, but he soon took matters into his own hands. Jackson drafted what would become the Jackson–Vanik amendment in mid-1972 and introduced it to the 92nd Congress on October 4, 1972. Jackson's efforts, rooted in his own domestic political agenda and ideological distrust of and antipathy toward the Soviet Union, complicated the Nixon White House's pursuit of detente, which it had worked on since 1969.

Jackson's staffer Richard Perle said in an interview that the idea belonged to Jackson, who believed that the right to emigrate was the most powerful among the human rights in certain respects: "if people could vote with their feet, governments would have to acknowledge that and governments would have to make for their citizens a life that would keep them there." While there was some opposition, the American Jewish establishment on the whole and Soviet Jewry activists (particularly the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry) supported the amendment over Nixon's and Kissinger's objections.

Jackson attached his amendment to legislation the Nixon administration badly wanted. In the House of Representatives, Vanik lined up House leaders as primary sponsors of the amendment. During this period, Jackson also expanded his base of support, adding other ethnic, economic, and ideological groups as supporters. Labor, ethnic groups originally from Eastern European and Baltic States, human rights organizations and liberal intellectuals were the most significant additions to organized labor and Jewish activists. While building support, Jackson resisted compromise with the administration and the Soviet Union.

Once the Nixon administration began to appreciate the threat Jackson presented its policy of detente, and in particular the linkage of detente to expanded trade, it made a number of attempts to thwart Jackson. The administration tried to keep the amendment out of the committee version of the bill during the House Ways and Means Committee's markup sessions. When it became clear that this was impossible, delay was the administration's next option, along with the threat of a veto.

In March 1974, Kissinger returned from Moscow with news that the Soviets were willing to cooperate with the members of Congress. Jackson, however, would complicate matters by making public the demands that had been accommodated in quiet diplomatic dialogue.

Eventually, Jackson accepted less than perfect terms. Jackson was anxious to achieve a legislative victory after years of battle and apparently decided it best not to ask too many more questions nor press too hard for less ambiguous pledges lest he be left with nothing to show for his efforts. However, in the late 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to comply with the protocols of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Lazin (2005) states that scholars differ on how effective the amendment was in helping Soviet Jews. Some argue that it helped bring the plight of Soviet Jews to the world's attention, while others believe it hindered emigration and decreased America's diplomatic bargaining power. The Lautenberg measure allowed refugee status to people from historically persecuted groups without requiring them to show that they had been singled out. Under the Lautenberg Amendment, 350,000 to 400,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union who had not presented any form of evidence of persecution gained entry to the United States by October 2002 according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Beginning in 2002, a special "Refugee Corps" in the Department of Homeland Security handled issues involving the Lautenberg Amendment.

Post-soviet states

Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were subject to the amendment because they had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union. They were liberated from the amendment upon the US recognition of their independence on September 6, 1991. In an article titled "A Relic of the Cold War", journalist Robert Guttman refers to the Amendment as an "outdated and rather meaningless piece of legislation". The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argues that the application of Jackson-Vanik on Kazakhstan puts U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage. The Chamber urges the U.S. Congress to graduate Kazakhstan from Jackson-Vanik.

Moldova

Moldova first received conditional normal trade relations in 1992. In 1997 it was found to be fully compliant with the Jackson-Vanik provisions, but its status remained subject to annual review. Putin tried to use his relationships with both the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was the head of the European Union's Council in 2003, to gain Russia's membership in the European Union, and also Hank Greenberg, who was the chairman and CEO of the American International Group (AIG), to repeal the Jackson-Vanik provisions in the United States.

Ukraine

On March 8, 2006, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill permanently exempting Ukraine from trade restrictions imposed under the 1974 Jackson–Vanik amendment.

People's Republic of China

Until the accession of the PRC to the World Trade Organization in December 2001 the PRC was covered by the provisions of Jackson-Vanik. Before China's crackdown on the Tiananmen protests of 1989, a waiver was granted to China as a routine matter. After the crackdown, the waiver became a more contentious issue.

References

Sources

External links

Subchapter IV—Trade Relations With Countries Not Receiving Nondiscriminatory Treatment