This is from a speech by Senator (and former U.S. Trade Rep.) Rob Portman:
I believe we should also target Russia's trade sector by revoking our Permanent Normal Trade Relationship, or PNTR, with Russia. In other words, the United States should no longer give Russia unrestricted access in trade to our country. This would have the effect of raising tariffs on goods from Russia to the rates at which they were before Russia joined the World Trade Organization and received this special status, PNTR, from the U.S. Congress. When I was U.S. Trade Representative, I helped negotiate this agreement, and it does give them certain privileges with regard to our economy.
Free trade with the United States is a privilege, not a right. After Russia joined the WTO in 2012, Congress passed legislation to expand trade between our countries by eliminating tariffs on some of these imports. But as easily as we granted PNTR, Congress can take it away. Invading a sovereign nation, a democracy no less, is certainly grounds for us to take away that privilege, and we have the right to undo it under the WTO rules for national security reasons. It would not be unprecedented. In 1992, Congress revoked market access for Serbia and Montenegro as a result of their aggression in the wake of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Today, I will be introducing bipartisan legislation to revoke unrestricted market access for countries who invade their neighbors. Period. I call upon our trading partners to invoke their own national security rights at the WTO and similarly take away market access Russia, until this point, has enjoyed in their economies.
This should be ended, this market access, unless and until Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty are as they were prior to the Russian invasion. ...
This part sounds a bit off to me: "This would have the effect of raising tariffs on goods from Russia to the rates at which they were before Russia joined the World Trade Organization and received this special status, PNTR, from the U.S. Congress." But weren't the tariffs on Russian imports at the same rate as those on imports from other countries prior to PNTR being granted, because NTR was being granted to Russia each year?
As to the WTO, the legislation he mentions is not publicly available yet, but it's interesting that instead of focusing on a push to suspend Russia's WTO membership, as Congressmen Blumenauer and Doggett did, he seems to want everyone to "invoke their own national security rights at the WTO and similarly take away market access Russia." That's probably a simpler approach to using the WTO to induce Russia to change course.
