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titled the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012) that repealed the application of the Jackson–Vanik amendment to Russia and gave normal US trade relations to Russia and Moldova, instead punishing individuals violating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).Stern 1979, Chapter 1.
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. Nixon's handling of the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration and US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger's reluctance to broach the subject disappointed US Jewish activists. The Soviets announced the abolition of the tax just before the introduction of the amendment in Congress, arguably in an attempt to halt its enactment."Declassified KGB Study Illuminates Early Years of Soviet Jewish Emigration", Sana Krasikov, December 12, 2007 (retrieved May 31, 2015)
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. However, three-quarters of the Senate co-sponsored the amendment, neutralizing opposition from President Nixon.Stern 1979, Chapter 2.
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.""Richard Perle: The Making of a Neoconservative", a PBS transcript 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.
In 1973 Rep. Charles Vanik, chair of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, introduced in the House of Representatives the legislation drafted with Jackson. The amendment would deny normal trade relations to certain countries with non-market economies that restricted freedom of emigration. The amendment was intended to allow primarily Jewish refugees and other religious minorities to escape from the Soviet bloc. Vanik's aide, Mark E. Talisman, is regarded as having played an instrumental role in securing passage.
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.Stern 1979, Chapter 3.
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.
The Yom Kippur War in October 1973 further complicated Congressional views of the Soviet Union. Soviet involvement in the conflict may have stoked distrust of the USSR by some members of Congress, but there were other members who feared that pressure on the Nixon Administration to advance the goals of the Jackson–Vanik amendment complicated the emergency supply of US military weapons to Israel. Israel prevailed in the Yom Kippur War, and on December 11 the House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming 319–80 vote to include the entire Jackson–Vanik amendment in the trade bill, which passed 272–140. With that, Congress recessed until January 1974.
On January 21, 1974, the second session of the 93rd United States Congress began, and the Jackson amendment was introduced in the Senate. Having lost the legislative battle in the House of Representatives, the administration and Soviet authorities turned to negotiations with Jackson. Trilateral talks began in spring 1974 involving Congress, the Executive Branch and the Soviet Union. The prominent individuals involved were Jackson, Kissinger, and Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin, a skilled senior diplomat who had served in Washington for decades. Kissinger enjoyed a special status in these negotiations since he alone controlled the communications between Jackson and the Soviet Union. In effect, Kissinger was the only one of the three parties involved who knew what all sides were saying in secret, informal sessions, while he also conducted a long-standing "back channel" dialogue with Soviet authorities via Dobrynin. Kissinger's influence only grew as Nixon was increasingly consumed by the Watergate political scandal.Stern 1979, Chapter 4.
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.
Jackson pursued negotiations with the administration and the Soviet Union on the terms of the amendment. The outline of an agreement was perceivable, but by summer the talks seemed to bog down as Watergate sapped the Executive Branch's political energy. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.
In August 1974, when the national deadlock was broken by Nixon's resignation and Ford's appointment, Jackson had to decide whether or not to concur with an agreement that was not perfect or hold out longer and possibly sink the entire trade bill. Given the choice of having the bill with the Jackson amendment or doing away with both the bill and the Jackson amendment together, Kissinger was apparently willing to let the two die. So to compromise, Jackson had agreed to grant, at least temporarily, trade concessions, including extensions of credit, to the Soviet Union.Stern 1979, Chapter 5.
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.
President Ford signed the 1972 Trade Agreement on January 3, 1975, with the Jackson amendment. On January 10, the Soviet government sent a letter that apparently indicated the Soviets' refusal to comply with the need to provide assurances on emigration or to make technical changes in the 1972 Trade Agreement. On January 13, Kissinger met with Soviet officials and subsequently issued a statement "that the 1972 Trade Agreement cannot be brought into force at this time and the President will therefore not take the steps required for this purpose by the Trade Agreement. The President does not plan at this time to exercise the waiver authority."
Business involvement Harry Stone, vice president and his brother, Irving Stone, president of American Greetings based in Vanick's home town, Cleveland, Ohio, played a major role in gaining sponsorship for the amendment. Harry Stone served as campaign chairman to the late U.S. Representative Charles Vanik, a connection that gained significance when Vanik asked Stone and his brother Irving, then American Greetings president, to encourage congressman Wilbur Mills to schedule a floor vote on the Jackson-Vanik Amendment requiring the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration to the U.S. in order to qualify for "most favored nation status" for its exports. Senator J. William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee characterized the amendment as "idealistic meddling" in the amendment's attempts to use free Jews using trade and credit as levers against the Soviet Union. American Greetings was the largest employer in Mills's Arkansas district. Fulbright, apparently saw the same light as Mills, as American Greetings opened one of its largest printing plants in Fulbright's and Mills's state of Arkansas.
"The role that Harry Stone played in making the Jackson-Vanik bill a reality will go down as one of the most meaningful contributions that a Clevelander has ever made," says Vic Gelb, an honorary for life director of the Cleveland Jewish News. "It made a world of difference in the history of events and enabled the exodus of Jews from the former Soviet Union."
Conclusion The difficulty faced by Senator Jackson in the three-way negotiation process that took place from August 1974 through January 1975, demonstrated some of the institutional constraints on congressional involvement in foreign policy making. The Jackson–Vanik amendment is a case study of how domestic politics shapes American Foreign policy making. It exemplifies the fact that one cannot understand U.S. foreign policy if one does not understand the domestic politics in Congress and the White House that shape policy decisions.