Jackson–Vanik amendment

According to the 1974 Trade Act of the United States, the Jackson-Vanik amendment, named for its major co-sponsors, Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA) and Rep. Charles Vanik (D-OH), denied Normal Trade Relations (then called "most favoured nation" status) to certain countries with non-market economies that restricted emigration rights. Permanent normal trade relations would be extended to a country subject to the law only if the President determined that it complies with the freedom of emigration requirements of the amendment. However, the President had the authority to grant a yearly waiver to the provisions of Jackson-Vanik, and these waivers were granted to the People's Republic of China starting in the late 1970s and later to Vietnam.

President Gerald Ford signed the amendment into law on January 3, 1975, after both houses of the United States Congress unanimous consently voted for its adoption.

Background

In 1972, as the Cold War and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict were intensifying, the regime of Leonid Brezhnev imposed the so-called "diploma tax" on would-be emigrants who received a higher education in the USSR. While the professed justification for this tax was to repay state expenses for public education, this measure was designed to combat the brain drain caused by the growing emigration of Soviet Jews and other members of the intelligentsia to the West. In some cases, the fee was as high as 20 times the emigrant's annual salary .

This development caused international protests. Twenty-one United States Nobel Laureates issued a public statement condemning it as a "massive violation of human rights". The Kremlin soon revoked the tax but imposed additional limitations, effectively choking off emigration, even for family reunification. A case could languish for years in the OVIR (ОВиР) department of the MVD. An often-cited but rarely explained official ground for the refusal to issue an emigration visa were "national security reasons".

Effects

At first, the Jackson-Vanik amendement did little to help Soviet Jewry. The number of exit visas declined after the passing of the amendment, as the USSR felt the external pressure was harming its credibility. In the late-1980s, however, Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to comply with the protocols of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Since 1975, more than 500,000 refugees, many of whom were Jews, evangelical Christians and Catholics from the former Soviet Union, have been resettled in the United States. An estimated one million Soviet Jews have immigrated to Israel in that time.

Jackson-Vanik also led to great changes within the Soviet Union. Other ethnic groups subsequently demanded the right to emigrate, and the ruling Communist Party had to face the fact that there was widespread dissatisfaction with its governance. A supporter of Jackson-Vanik and action to relieve the plight of Soviet Jewry, State Rep. Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia, said

"The genius of Jackson-Vanik was that it found a constructive long-term way to help solve the problems of late 20th century victims of communism without use of military force. It helped change the direction of American anti-communist movements from a focus on domestic supporters of communism, which had led to McCarthyism, and military involvements, which had led to the quagmire in Vietnam, to a focus on using American economic strength to serve as a new underpinning of American values. It was a brilliant public policy innovation."

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky wrote in his 2004 book The Case for Democracy:

"...Kissinger saw Jackson's amendment as an attempt to undermine plans to smoothly carve up the geopolitical pie between the superpowers. It was. Jackson believed that the Soviets had to be confronted, not appeased.

Andrei Sakharov was another vociferous opponent of détente. He thought it swept the Soviet's human rights record under the rug in the name of improved superpower relations... One message he would consistently convey to these foreigners (the press) was that human rights must never be considered a humanitarian issue alone. For him, it was also a matter of international security. As he succinctly put it: "A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbors."" (p.3)

Jackson-Vanik is still in force and applies to Russia, among other countries. Critics of the amendment argue that with the end of the Cold War, Jackson-Vanik is a now merely counterproductive trade discrimination, but some still see it as instrumental in helping democracy take hold in Eastern Europe. On December 6, 2005, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) urged the US House of Representatives to delay approval of Ukraine’s graduation from the amendment. ADL National Director Abraham Foxman wrote: "We expect more from democratic states than we do from totalitarian ones. This year alone has seen a steep increase in acts of violence and vandalism against Jews across Ukraine. There have been attempts to ban everything from Jewish organizations to Jewish holy texts. The university MAUP... actively promotes anti-Semitism of the most vicious kind." [1]

Jackson-Vanik and the 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. Although the President of the United States, starting in the late 1970s, used the waiver provisions of the amendment to grant normal trade relations trade status, the existence of the amendment meant that there was a congressional effort to overturn this waiver each year, creating a yearly controversy especially during the 1990s after the Tiananmen protests of 1989. Congress specifically removed the PRC from coverage by Jackson-Vanik in the late 1990s as part of its entry into the World Trade Organization, as the provisions of Jackson-Vanik were inconsistent with WTO rules.

References

• Jackson-Vanik and Russia Fact Sheet, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. November 13, 2001.
• China and the WTO