Bill on Russian trade OK’d, sent to Obama

The Senate voted Thursday to eliminate Cold War-era trade restrictions on Russia, but at the same time it condemned Moscow for humanrights abuses, threatening to further strain an already fraught relationship with the Kremlin.

The Senate bill, which passed the House last month, now goes to President Barack Obama, who has opposed turning a trade bill into a statement on the Russian government’s treatment of its people.

But with such overwhelming support in Congress - the measure passed the Senate 92-4 and the House 365-43 - the administration has had little leverage to press its case.

Arkansas’ Sens. Mark Pryor, a Democrat, and John Boozman, a Republican, voted for the bill. Speaking to reporters shortly after the Senate vote, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said the president is committed to signing the bill.

The most immediate effect of the bill will be to formally normalize trade relations with Russia after nearly 40 years. Since the 1970s, commerce between Russia and the United States has been subject to restrictions that were designed to punish communist nations that refused to allow their citizens to leave freely.

While presidents have waived the restrictions since the Cold War ended - allowing them to remain on the books as a symbolic sore point with the Russians - the issue took on new urgency this summer after Russia joined the World Trade Organization. U.S. businesses can take advantage of lower trade tariffs only with nations that enjoy normalized trade status

By some estimates, tradewith Russia is expected to double after the limits are lifted. But another effect of the bill - and one that has Russian officials furious with Washington - will be to require that the federal government freeze the assets of Russians implicated in human-rights abuses and to deny them visas.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were inspired to attach those provisions to the trade legislation because of the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was tortured and died in prison in 2009 after he exposed a government taxfraud scheme.

Information for this article was contributed by Ellen Barry of The New York Times.