By Nadia Popova / The Moscow Times
U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday said making good on a Kremlin promise to promote the rule of law would be a vital step toward boosting trade between U.S. and Russian companies.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said economic ties could soon improve because he had received assurances from the Obama administration that it would prioritize the scrapping of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a major Soviet-era trade barrier between the countries.
The heads of U.S. and Russian companies, meanwhile, griped at a business conference about the challenges of working in each other’s countries.
“We want Russia to be selling us goods, and we want Russia to be buying from us,” Obama told the Moscow Business Summit co-organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. “Our fortunes are linked, and yet so much potential remains untapped.”
Annual trade between the countries totals $36 billion, which is about 1 percent of U.S. trade with the rest of the world.
The percentage has remained “virtually unchanged since the Cold War,” Obama said. “That $36 billion is about the same as our trade with Thailand, a country with less than half the population of Russia. Surely we can do better.”
But a condition for better trade relations is Russia’s observance of the rule of law, he said.
“We have to promote transparency, accountability [and] rule of law, on which investments and economic growth depend,” Obama said. “And so I welcome very much President Medvedev’s initiatives to promote the rule of law and ensure a mature and effective legal system as a condition for sustained economic growth.”
Medvedev urged business executives to look beyond Russia’s oil and gas.
“It is important that our American partners not only work in the oil and gas sector … but also invest in other spheres, both in those that are traditional for Russia and in high-technology,” he said.
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