The so-called Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which limits US trade with Kazakhstan, cannot yet be repealed due to the lack of a “critical mass“ of votes in the US Congress. This was admitted by Jeff Ehrlich, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Kazakhstan, at the B5+1 forum on strengthening economic cooperation between the US and Central Asia, which is currently taking place in Bishkek.
In response to a question about why the amendment remains in force, he noted that currently the US Congress is discussing “global, important issues, issues of life and death, peace and war“. "On the one hand, almost no one supports this law now, but there is no critical mass in Congress to repeal it," he said.
He explained the effect of the provision, adopted during the Soviet era, on Kazakhstan by referring to the "rule of law" in the United States, citing laws adopted more than 200 years ago that are still in effect. Ehrlich assured that the House will take action to repeal it, recalling that the amendment applies not only to Kazakhstan but also to other Central Asian countries.
The Jackson-Vanik amendment was adopted in the United States in 1974. It linked the normalization of bilateral trade to the issue of emigration from the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the USSR, the amendment remained in force for some post-Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan. Astana has repeatedly raised the need to repeal this amendment; US Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously called it a “relic” in relations with Central Asian countries. The Kazakh Foreign Ministry reported on February 4 that Minister Ermek Kosherbayev, during his visit to the US, had again discussed the repeal of this amendment and promising areas of cooperation with members of Congress.