Senate Passes Russian Trade Agreement

This article discusses how the senate agreed to pass a Russian trade bill that is expected to assist the United States in our struggling economy. Despite slow growth in our domestic economy, if Obama signs the bill then most analysts affirm that there would be a boost in American jobs. This is not the only benefit for the creation of jobs, but would also expand new markets and U.S. exports of goods and services to Russia would also increase and is expected to double over the next five years. This is a great chance for us to expand our economy and would greatly benefit American exports. Although many trade restrictions were eliminated between the U.S. and Russia, the main concern of this bill was condemning Moscow for human rights abuses. Moreover, this has infuriated Russia because the our government will freeze their assets and deny Russians visas if there were further implications of human rights abuse. This past summer Russia joined the World Trade Organization which was also beneficial to the United States because Russia then lowered tariffs for other member countries. As we have learned in class, by eliminating tariffs and quotas, or in this case lowering them, will decrease the amount of deadweight loss and increase consumer surplus. Personally, I believe this is great news for our domestic economy, but will come at a hefty price to Russians because they will ultimately lose a lot of revenue with increased imports. Not to sound selfish, but the fact that Russia has one of the strongest economies as of today, I believe they can ultimately suffer a small loss in export revenue. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/business/global/senate-passes-russian-trade-bill-with-conditions.html?_r=0