Russia Slows Progress on WTO Commitments in 2014, Says USTR Report
Russian scaled back its efforts to meet World Trade Organization requirements in its second year as a member, following a promising 2013, said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in an annual report (here). President Barack Obama signed into law in December 2012 a measure to give Russia permanent normal trade relations after it acceded to the WTO, but throughout 2014 Russia abused and violated a set of trade rules, said USTR in the report. The PNTR legislation requires USTR to submit an annual report on Russian trade compliance.
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On the trade facilitation front, the country has reduced some customs fees and improved its valuation process. USTR currently is not concerned about Russian compliance with its customs fee pledges, part of the country’s WTO accession process. The U.S. will monitor more developments with Russian changes to its valuation, said the report. Many of Russia’s trade policies have to comply with the rules of the Customs Union it finalized earlier in the year with Belarus and Kazakhstan (see 14053001).
But among other pressing concerns, Russia continues to apply unscientific sanitary and phytosanitary measures to restrict U.S. agricultural exports in probable violation of WTO rules, said USTR. “In those cases where Russia has provided the United States with risk assessment purporting to justify its SPS measures, there are concerns that those assessments do not appear to have been conducted taking into account risk assessment techniques of relevant international organizations,” said the report. “For example, Russia has adopted a zero tolerance for both ractopamine and trenbolone acetate, standards more stringent than Codex’s maximum residue levels (MRL) for pork and beef, but does not appear to have provided risk assessments that conform to Codex guidelines. In addition, Russia has a near zero tolerance for tetracycline residues, a standard more stringent than Codex’s MRL, but again appears to have failed to provide WTO Members with a risk assessment that conforms to international guidelines.”
Russia also retaliates against countries unjustly and have yet to meet tariff reduction commitments for the Information Technology Agreement, the report added. Russia banned agricultural products from the U.S. and several allies in recent months over the ongoing diplomatic spat involving Russian support for Ukrainian rebels (see 14082804).
The country is breaking down barriers for Russian exports, said the report, which emphasized slashed restrictions on raw materials for pharmaceuticals. “However, in August 2014, Russia introduced a ban on exports of raw hides, apparently to support its leather processing industry,” said the report. The country is also failing to protect intellectual property enough, although IP protection is improving, the report said.