A View From Outside:

Russia And The Case For The WTO

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is perhaps the most controversial of international institutions. On the right, Jesse Helms and Patrick Buchanan denounce it as a threat to jobs and American self-government; Naderites on the left seem to consider it both a threat to the United States and an American plot for world hegemony. The general public, while skeptical about such arguments, also appears uneasy with the WTO and prone to view it as an institution largely designed to help big business.

American policymakers often respond in strictly economic terms. Treasury Secretary O’Neill’s comment that a new WTO Round would bring a “tax cut of $2,500 per year for the typical American family,”1 is an example. But such appeals to business and consumer benefits, in the face of more fundamental questions of sovereignty and competition, have proven unconvincing.

One of the WTO’s most important current negotiations – those on membership for Russia – makes a much better case for the institution. The Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR), a Moscow think-tank contributing to Putin Administration economic policy, notes that two basic points are at stake. First, especially for Russia and other new members, the WTO agreements help promote reform and growth. Second, and still more important, by opening world markets and strengthening the rule of law in the global economy, the WTO contributes to peace. As the Institute says: “An open economy is a key instrument in building constructive international relations. Trade and mutual investment make economies interdependent, limiting hostile manifestations of foreign policy. As a result, foreigners are perceived as professional peers, business partners, buyers and suppliers of goods and services – rather than as abstract enemies.”2

Origins of the WTO

Russians may now see this more clearly today than Westerners, because theirs is a view from outside the system. Experience teaches them daily about the trade discrimination, loss of economic efficiency and other disadvantages of a world without an institution like the WTO. But Western countries as well once had similar experiences; and these were the reason an earlier generation of internationalist liberals – Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and their Allied counterparts in Western Europe – created the trading system six decades ago.

President Roosevelt, speaking to the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace in Buenos Aires in 1936, reflected as follows on the interplay between an unraveling world economy, the spread of virulent nationalism, and the origins of war: “The welfare and prosperity of each of our Nations depend in large part on the benefits derived from commerce among ourselves and with other Nations, for our present civilization rests on the basis of an international exchange of commodities. Every Nation of the world has felt the evil effects of recent efforts to erect trade barriers of every known kind. Every individual citizen has suffered from them. It is no accident that the Nations which have carried this process farthest are those which proclaim most loudly that they require war as an instrument of their policy… [B]ecause of these suicidal policies and the suffering attending them, many of their people have come to believe with despair that the price of war seems less than the price of peace.”3

Such thoughts remained in his mind after the Second World War. Nine years after his address in Argentina, he opened the first GATT negotiations and predicted that their success or failure would help decide “the kind of lives our grandchildren will live.”4

That particular initiative was concluded by the Truman Administration, Britain’s postwar Labor government, and 21 other countries. Today’s WTO is simply the result of this initiative, proceeding through six decades, eight separate negotiating rounds, and the “accession” of 121 more members. The present generation, as the grandchildren of whom Roosevelt spoke, draws its benefits in a more cohesive, prosperous and stable world economy; and in eased relations among the great powers.

Contemporary Trade Debate

What then accounts for the WTO’s contemporary bad image? Perhaps there are three points to consider.

First, familiarity breeds contempt. Trade negotiations, through the GATT and more recently its successor the WTO, have continued since the 1940s. Western publics and governments have gotten used to them, and lost the habit of seeing their political goals.

Second, unfamiliarity breeds fear. The fact of trade negotiations may be familiar, but their conduct is often confusing and their results hard to follow. The WTO’s twenty separate agreements range from tariff and definitions (e.g. the “rules of origin” agreement, providing a way to decide what T-shirt comes from which country) through sanitary and phytosanitary standards in agriculture, services regulation in telecom and financial services, intellectual property, tariffs, quasi-judicial dispute settlement processes, and technical standards. Its 144 members all have somewhat different obligations that phase in at different times. And it is pushing ahead at least three sets of negotiations simultaneously: the new Round launched last November (which itself combines two previously launched talks on agriculture and services), negotiations on membership for 30 different economies, and disputes cases between members on dozens of highly specific products and issues. Such a system – even with the greatest possible commitment to transparency – is inherently hard to follow.

Finally, success has a price. The institutions of postwar internationalism – not only the trading system but the World Bank and IMF, the UN, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, NATO and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty – have come close to many of their goals. In the case of the WTO, the world economy has been substantially re-integrated since the 1940s. Most of its major powers now regard one another more as customers and investors than abstract enemies or sparring partners. And thus the stakes of great-power diplomacy are lower.

So today’s trade debates usually focus on topics often far from the preservation of peace. More often they revolve around the WTO’s institutional inadequacies, and the question of whether it can do more to contribute to international respect for labor standards, better environmental protection and other emerging questions related to the global economy.

Such debates, of course, are inherently good things. Some of the WTO’s institutional weaknesses – e.g. lack of transparency in dispute settlement – are fairly obvious and should be remedied. Likewise, the labor and environmental debate can make a contribution to balanced and equitable economic growth in the future. But if the debates do not proceed conscious of the contribution a system of open trade and markets makes to peace, they can lead to proposals and choices that are more destructive than helpful.

This brings the argument back to Russia. Today’s negotiations over WTO membership for Russia, and Congress’ choice on whether to make Normal Trade Relations status for Russia permanent, are an almost unique chance to restore the balance in the debate on the WTO.

Russia In The World Economy

American Administrations and most of the public, although occasionally baffled about how to proceed, have believed for a decade that just as the Soviet Union’s revolutionary foreign policy was one of the great disasters of the 20th century, so modern Russia’s choice for democracy and markets brought with it great hopes for the 21st. But ten years after the Soviet Union broke into pieces, many of these hopes remain simply hopes.

In foreign policy, successive Russian governments – Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin – have wavered between cooperation and closer ties with the west, and an independent course more reliant on the old partners of the Soviet Union. Their economic policies present a likewise mixed picture – at home, reform has made progress but remains incomplete; abroad, Russia’s place in the world economy remains insecure.

To begin with the positive, Russia faced higher obstacles to overcome in domestic reform and international integration than almost any other new democracy, and has achieved much more than many recognize. Not only was its history with communism longer than that of other nations, but the breakup of the Soviet Union also sharply disrupted its internal commerce and production systems. Despite all this, and in the face of an ocean of bad press, Russia has some genuine and lasting accomplishments. As the financial crisis of 1998-99 recedes, it may not be an exaggeration to say that in economic terms Russia is in better shape than at any time since 1914.

At home, with a GDP of $330 billion5 (equivalent to a medium-sized Western European economy like Switzerland or Belgium) modern Russia is a much smaller economy than the old Soviet Union. But this should not be simply interpreted as decline. Today’s smaller GDP records the fact that Russia is a smaller country, with 140 million people living in other former Soviet republics. It also reveals the closure of obsolete plants, a shrinking military budget, more honest statistics, the decline of irrational growth based on state command, and other reforms that fundamentally strengthen the smaller, economy. Recent trends in GDP growth and foreign reserves are strong – the economy grew by 5.7% last year – though such statistics, particularly for economies reliant on natural resource exports, can fluctuate sharply from year to year. And Russia did inherit some strengths from the Soviet era, notably a well-educated workforce and an advanced aerospace industry.

There are also, though, less encouraging facts. Russia’s macroeconomic and financial struggles have been well publicized. Equally so is the preservation of some of the characteristic failures of the old Soviet Union – wastage of agricultural goods through bad transport, or bad phone systems – through name-only “privatizations” of production facilities, distribution and telecom networks and other assets to ministry cronies.

Less well known, and especially relevant in considering the WTO accession, are microeconomic and regulatory troubles. Ministries, finding revenue uncertain and inexperienced with new roles as regulators rather than producers of goods, issue vast numbers of unnecessary regulations and license requirements simply to raise money. This fosters corruption among big businesses and officials, and plagues less-connected small-scale Russian entrepreneurs and foreign businesses with long approval processes, unnecessary fees, and occasional absurdities. In one case, the Ministry of Health imposed a regulation that unwittingly required importers of sofas to abide by a ‘sell-by’ date like those normally applied to meat or fresh vegetables.

A look at the international side reveals a somewhat similar picture. Over the past decade, Russia has gained access to world markets, for example through the American grant of Normal Trade Relations ten years ago. It has also built up a large trade surplus, with $105 billion in exports and $49 billion in imports in the year 2000.6 But just as weak domestic statistics can hide positive longer-term trends, strong international statistics can obscure more troubling facts.

The trade surplus, for example, reflects low imports and weak investment as much as export growth. Foreign investment in Russia, while quadrupling since 1995, remains concentrated in natural resources industries and is less than a quarter of FDI in Poland.7 And overall export growth conceals frequent discrimination by other major economies against Russian goods.

Russia’s trade relationship with the United States, though smaller than that with Western Europe, illustrates these contradictions in concrete terms. Valued at about $11 billion in two-way trade last year, it is much larger than the U.S. trade relationship with the Soviet Union. And some individual successes are striking. Russia is a major market for American beef and pork. Until its recent ban of American chicken, Russia was the U.S.’ single largest foreign market for poultry. The United States buys about 2 million gallons of Russian vodka per year8, and about 10,000 king crabs a day from the Arctic Sea fishing fleet;9 and Russia is also a large source of mining products for America, notably the palladium used in dental drills and cell phones.

But despite its overall growth, the trade relationship has been punctuated by bitter disputes and arbitrary discrimination on both sides. In the 1990s, American aluminum and steel mills won sharp reductions in Russian imports through capacity reduction and quota agreements. But at least in steel, these have neither eased U.S. industry concern about the legacy of Soviet-era subsidies, nor protected Russia from further market access restrictions. The bilateral steel agreement in 1999 cut Russian steel exports to the U.S. from 5.2 million tons in 1998 to 1.7 million tons last year; on top of this, the Bush Administration recently added new import taxes. This works in both directions, of course – just as Russia’s government has little ability to defend its metal exporters, so American poultry farmers have little recourse against the ban on their products.

Russian Stake in WTO Membership

Thus, Russian exporters have little security in foreign markets. And foreign businesses hoping to export to or invest in Russia remain hobbled by trade barriers, corruption, and unpredictable tax and regulatory decisions. A further point, discussed in more detail below, is that Russia has no direct way to achieve its goals or protect its own interests in ongoing trade negotiations with deep importance for the Russian economy, from agriculture and antidumping policies to the future trade regimes of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other Russian neighbors. As a result, Russians have fewer “professional peers, business partners, buyers and suppliers of goods and services” in the west than they should have, and the security benefits the world should draw from Russian reform are lessened.

WTO membership is, of course, no cure for all of Russia’s ills. But it does seem well suited to address many of them. It will give Russia new “rights” to defend itself against trade discrimination and influence future trade negotiations. And it will require Russia to adopt new “responsibilities,” by opening its market to foreign goods and services, and giving up some of its ability to impose its own arbitrary trade restrictions. The benefits of both are evident in a brief examination of the experience of some of Europe’s smaller new democracies.10

Albania, which joined the WTO in 2000, illustrates the contribution WTO responsibilities can make to reform. To join the WTO, according to Trade Minister Ermelinda Meksi, Albania passed no fewer than 66 separate laws to comply with agreements on sanitary and phytosanitary standards in agriculture, telecommunications, financial services, intellectual property, technical standards and other fields.11 Each of these brings its own return. By adopting technical standards compatible with world markets, Albania ensures that its manufactured goods are accepted overseas and improves the quality of goods at home. By accepting international SPS standards in agriculture, Albanian farms can sell on world markets. And the adoption of modern law and regulatory policy in telecommunications and financial services, where no such policies existed before, is crucial to the transparent, efficient functioning of any modern economy.

The case of Bulgaria, which joined the WTO in 1996, shows some of the longer-term benefits of WTO accession. In a region with obvious difficulties in attracting investment and creating jobs – incessant warfare in neighboring countries throughout the 1990s, and sanctions on Yugoslavia which have closed the Danube to trade – the simple fact of WTO membership has given foreign businesses confidence that Bulgaria is not simply one in a string of unstable post-communist nations, but an open economy where rights are protected. Thus, Bulgaria has seen foreign direct investment flows rise ten-fold since WTO membership.12 With reform well advanced, Bulgaria now views future WTO membership as a way to achieve its own practical export and intellectual property protection goals.

Such developments are likely in Russia as well. Russia’s new “responsibilities,” as a WTO member will help to complete the reform begun in the days of glasnost and perestroika; its new “rights” will help ensure fair treatment for Russia in world markets, and allow Russia to shape the future trading system in its own interest. A look at a few of the WTO’s current agreements and activities shows some of the possibilities.

Responsibilities and Domestic Reform

On the side of “responsibilities,” each change in policy to comply with WTO agreements will, in the immediate sense, open the Russian market to foreign goods, services and investment. But each will also simplify and rationalize Russian law and regulatory policy, helping to create a more efficient economy, attract investment and strengthen the rule of law. Four WTO agreements, chosen from different periods in the evolution of the trading system, offer practical examples.

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): The GATT is the oldest of the WTO agreements, dating to the foundation of the trading system in 1947. Here, accession requires Russia to lower tariffs and rationalize its tariff system to meet the market access priorities of other WTO members.

Typically and not unreasonably, Americans see these issues in terms of their commercial benefit to the United States. But the GATT commitments also have important implications for efficiency and the rule of law in the Russian economy, which are already evident in a major reform of tariff and customs policy adopted by the Duma last year.

Tariffs in the first post-Soviet years were at times high, and almost always complicated. This not only created powerful barriers to imports, but reduced economic efficiency, made tariffs less effective as sources of revenue, and bred corruption. Preparatory work for WTO accession has prompted Russia to replace this system with a few overall tariff categories, at 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%.13

The Russian Trade Minister, German Gref, uses flowers as a case study in the value of this reform. A proliferation of tariff categories and duty rates made tariffs very high on cut flowers and low on leaves. The result was a sharp increase in imports of leaves with flowers hidden inside, and illicit payments at various government offices to avoid inspections. Gref considered the system “sufficient to corrupt all the necessary points along the transport route, from border officials to bodies affording legal protection.14” By contrast, the new regime reduced overall rates and taxed leaves and flowers equally, lessening opportunities for corruption and easing life for florists.

Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT): A second example is the “TBT” agreement, created in the Tokyo Round of negotiations in the 1970s. Its effects are comparable to those of tariff simplification in the field of consumer protection and product approval: rationalization, standardization, less opportunity for corruption and more ability to meet core government responsibilities.

Like tariffs, standards-setting in post-Soviet Russia became complex, burdensome for Russian and foreign business, and conducive to corruption. In total, Russian ministries and standard-setting agencies have apparently published more than 22,000 technical standards.15 This is the root cause of odd results like the shelf-life standards for sofas. More often, it simply means a frustrating and time-consuming ways for ministries to raise money.

Importers of deodorant spray, for example – even if their product is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or analogous bodies in France or Japan – must apply for nine separate licenses at offices ranging from the national standards-setting agency GOSSTANDARD through the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Trade and Economic Development, and the Ministry of Natural Resources. These can cover issues such as hazardous materials examination, fire safety, and a $10,000 license for importing a “product containing alcohol.” The wait is typically between six and eight months,16 making life difficult for exporters to Russia and small-scale Russian entrepreneurs interested in opening beauty parlors and pharmacies.

General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS): This agreement, concluded in the Uruguay Round in 1994, is one of the WTO’s most complex and least developed agreements. It covers a vast range of industries – telecommunications, the professions, financial services, newly developing Internet-based industries, distribution sectors like trucking or express delivery – in which traditional concepts of “trade” and “trade barriers” are not always meaningful.

The agreement itself asked little actual policy reform from WTO members, but has since been developed through subsequent agreements and on financial services and basic telecommunications. Given development of the Internet and electronic commerce, trade has grown rapidly in such industries. The WTO’s role as a vehicle for reform and opening up of fields typically dominated by monopolies or state industries has grown with it.

New democracies and other recent WTO members have thus found the GATS a convenient way to import modern regulatory policies and develop competition that improves performance into the financial services, distribution and telecommunications industries. Such reforms in turn can help to improve service for consumers, reduce phone rates and mortgage levels, help farmers get goods to market with less wastage, and generally create more efficient and consumer-friendly economy. With respect to the financial sector, CEFIR notes that:

“Without foreign competition, Russia’s financial companies have lacked proper incentives to improve their operations. Only in the sectors that were subject to strong foreign competition, such as investment banks, have strong domestic financial institutions emerged. … Naturally, financial underdevelopment causes the most damage to complex industries such as engineering, pharmaceuticals, microelectronics and the like… WTO accession should help resolve this problem through the introduction of foreign financial institutions and insurance companies to the Russian market.” 17

Information Technology Agreement (ITA): This agreement, concluded two years after the creation of the WTO, is one of the newest international trade agreements. It eliminates tariffs on computers, semiconductors and related IT products for countries choosing to participate (unlike the GATT, TBT or GATS agreements, the ITA is an optional agreement).

Most new WTO members, including all the new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe that have recently joined, have found the ITA a way to speed up adoption of modern information technologies, and thus to upgrade productivity in a range of industries from media through farming and heavy manufacturing. This should be especially important for Russia, where manufacturing has a strong history and workers generally have the educational background to adapt rapidly; but where many production facilities must also quickly upgrade technologies to survive international competition.

2. Anchoring Russia in the West

The “rights” side of the WTO is equally important. Here, rules and current negotiations will give Russia, for the first time, assurances of fair treatment in current trade and a chance to shape the future world economy. Three points here are of special importance.

Safeguards, Anti-Dumping and Dispute Settlement Understanding: First, as long as it remains outside the WTO, Russia will be vulnerable to arbitrary restrictions of exports by foreign trade partners. The Bush Administration’s imposition of tariffs on Russian steel is simply one of many real-life examples.

WTO rules do not forbid such actions. The Safeguards Agreement, in fact, explicitly authorizes the United States and other members to impose emergency trade protection to cope with sudden import-related injuries to industries. But through the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding – the arrangement by which WTO members can file disputes against one another – Europe and other WTO members are able to test the Administration’s action against an explicit set of standards: transparent legal procedures, due process, time limits and so on. If an impartial panel finds that the Administration’s action does not meet these standards, the Bush Administration will either have to remove the tariffs, provide compensation to the injured countries, or allow them to retaliate against U.S. exports.

Russia, by contrast, has no way to challenge such actions other than through its own arbitrary retaliations against American businesses that have no connection with steel. And if the panel rules that the Bush Administration’s action violates our WTO commitments, we are required to lift them for the EU but have no obligation to lift them for Russia. Likewise, were Russia in the WTO, the United States would have had legal recourse against the ban on poultry, as the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards agreement would oblige Russia’s Agriculture Ministry to demonstrate that its action had a basis in science.

Other new democracies – mainly in Central Europe – have already used the Dispute Settlement Understanding in analogous cases. Poland has filed cases regarding anti-dumping actions against Polish steel in Thailand and Polish sugar in Slovakia. The Czech Republic has filed a case questioning a Hungarian safeguard action on steel; and Hungary has filed cases on barriers to wheat imports in Romania, Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic.18 Were these countries still outside the WTO, such disputes would likely have proceeded through trade restrictions, retaliation and rancor – the only options Russia now has available. As a result, Central Europe might appear far more like the fractious, quarrelsome region it was in the interwar period than the integrated group of democracies it is today.

GATT and Permanent Normal Trade Relations: Second, the GATT agreement requires all members to treat one another equally. Russia, outside the WTO, has no such guarantee. It is thus one of only a few countries still subject to the “Jackson-Vanik” amendment19 and thus lacking permanent Normal Trade Relations status in the United States. As in the case of China, once Russia joins the WTO, the U.S. would have to make NTR permanent, either repealing Jackson-Vanik altogether or removing Russia from it.

Doha Round and CIS Accession Talks: Finally, countries outside the WTO have only minimal ability to shape the world’s trade negotiating agenda.

To examine one example, the WTO began negotiations on farm trade reform in 2000. Its decision last November to launch a new Round set a deadline for concluding these talks by 2005. The agriculture negotiations, among other things, will seek reform of European Union subsidies that depress income for Russian farmers.20 Anti-dumping negotiations, given Russia’s experience in metals trade, are likewise a matter of central interest. Until it joins the WTO, Russia will have no ability to influence the talks in either area.

The WTO’s ongoing accession negotiations with several of Russia’s neighbors – Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, among others – offer an example that may be still more important. These countries now take about one-seventh of all of Russia’s exports. As WTO members, the EU, Poland, Hungary, China and other competitors for CIS markets all have a chance to shape the future Ukrainian, Kazakh and Belarusan trade regimes. Russia does not, posing a serious long-term risk for Russian exporters.

Conclusion: Strategic Stakes

What, then, should Americans expect from Russia’s WTO membership?

Russian membership is likely to prove an overall commercial advantage for the United States, as markets open for capital goods, information technologies, fresh foods, express delivery services and other industries. In areas like agricultural subsidies, Russian WTO membership may also prove a tactical advantage for the United States, as a major power with parallel interests joins the U.S. in the WTO Round. In other areas, it will pose uncomfortable choices as the ability to restrict imports from Russia diminishes.

But the true importance of Russia’s accession lies elsewhere. WTO agreements and negotiations are ways to help Russians see foreigners – and foreigners see Russians – as professional peers, business partners, buyers and suppliers of goods and services, rather than as abstract enemies.

This is the prize in the accession talks. Though a lesser power than the Soviet Union, Russia remains one of the world’s great nations: a country spanning half the world’s time zones, possessing nuclear weapons, with a powerful high-tech industry and influence in the Middle East, Asia and Central Europe. The better-disposed Russia becomes to the West, the more secure the world will be against a vast range of potential threats. Trade integration, though far from the most important aspect of the overall relationship with Russia, has a part to play.

This prospect, in turn, should remind participants in the American debates on the WTO of the organization’s basic rationale, and the goals of America’s postwar leaders in establishing its predecessor the GATT. Debates on the contemporary WTO have been emotional and divisive, as is appropriate for important questions of international law and economic policy. But too often the institution’s critics, while making valid and important secondary points, lose sight of its more fundamental purpose and value.

The talks on Russia’s accession are a unique opportunity to restore the balance. Few of the WTO’s present activities have so much potential to contribute to world political stability and peace. And few offer a better way to understand the system’s benefits. Russian analysts like those in CEFIR, with the advantage of a view from outside, can see them clearly. The Westerners who have enjoyed such benefits for decades might do well to listen.

Notes

1. See Secretary Paul O’Neill, U.S. Leadership in the Global Economy, House Committee on Financial Services, February 28, 2002, available at http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/po1053.htm; or Washington Post editorial, The Bush Tax Hike, March 5, 2001.

2. Center for Economic and Financial Research and Club 2015, “Russia in the WTO: Myths and Reality,” available in English and Russian at http://www.cefir.org/wto_pub.html.

3. Franklin Roosevelt, Address Before the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace, Buenos Aires, December 1, 1936.

4. See Franklin Roosevelt, Message to Congress, March 16, 1945.

5. World Bank, World Development Indicators 2001, Table 1.1, page 13. Note that the alternative “Purchasing Power Parity” method yields a much larger figure - $1 trillion, or a GDP roughly equivalent to that of Italy.

6 International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook 2001.

7. UNCTAD World Investment Report 2001.

8. ITC Dataweb. Incidentally, such figures may offer a good measurement of the recession in the United States. Since the Bush Administration took office, imports of vodka have replaced imports of champagne on an almost precise gallon-for-gallon basis. While imports of vodka rose by nearly 7 million liters in 2001, champagne imports dropped by 8 million liters.

9. For these statistics see International Trade Commission Dataweb, dataweb.usitc.gov

10. Eleven new democracies have joined the WTO since its creation in 1995: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, and Slovenia. Armenia appears likely to join soon; all other former Soviet and Yugoslav republics with the exception of Turkmenistan have applied to join. Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania were all GATT members.

11. Ermelinda Meksi, National Statement of Albania, 2001 WTO Ministerial Conference, Qatar, at www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min01_e/statements_e/st56.pdf.

12. UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2001. Also see Nikolay Vassilev, National Statement of Bulgaria, 2001 WTO Ministerial Conference, Qatar, www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min01_e/statements_e/st122.pdf.

13. German Gref, Russian Minister for Trade and Economic Development, Sinclair House Address, November 17, 2000.

14. Ibid.

15. U.S. Trade Representative, National Trade Estimate 2001, pg. 380. Russia section is available at http://www.ustr.gov/html/2001_russia.pdf.

16. Anecdote provided by Procter & Gamble Company.

17. CEFIR and Russia 2015, op. cit., pg. 10.

18. Summaries of all current dispute settlement cases and findings are available from the WTO web page at http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_e.htm.

19. Passed in 1974 to encourage Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.

20. See, for example, Brent Borrell and Lionel Hubbard, “Global Economic Effects of the EU Common Agricultural Policy,” Institute of Economic Affairs, London, June 2000.

Mr. Edward Gresser is Director for the Project on Trade and Global Markets for the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The article was written in February 2002.

Last Updated: April 23, 2003.
Copyright the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce® 1995-2003. All rights reserved.