Without "Bush legs"

Finally, the Russian authorities recognized the obvious fact: the country will not join the World Trade Organization in the foreseeable future. The negotiations, which have been going on for a decade and a half (since 1993), are constantly being hampered by something, but until yesterday the Russian side expressed constant optimism and, when it came to joining the WTO, promised to “complete the negotiation process by the end of the year.” But whenever it seemed that the last minor formalities were left, there was some country trying to resolve its political or economic issues by using Russia's accession to the WTO as an additional bargaining chip. Moreover, the most zealous were, as a rule, the countries that had recently joined the Organization. However, the last person to threaten the country with excommunication from the WTO because of the invasion of Georgia was the American Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez.

And every time, having received a turnaround, the Russian authorities began new rounds of negotiations, looked for compromises, consoling the public with assurances that the wait would not be long. This continued until last Monday, when at a meeting of the government presidium, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, responsible for negotiations on Russia’s accession to the WTO, was forced to admit: “I note with regret that we do not see any prospects in the near future to become a member of this respected organization.” , and immediately proposed to withdraw from a number of agreements signed as part of the negotiations, returning to their implementation after accession to the WTO takes place. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also supported his deputy, which made the denunciation of the mentioned agreements a resolved issue.

You can console yourself as much as you like by ranting about the deepest crisis in which the WTO has been in recent years, unable to resolve differences between developed and developing countries, you can argue that the world is on the threshold of a new era of protectionism in foreign trade, but the essence does not change: membership in the Organization of Russia is no more likely than the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, in force since 1974. Therefore, withdrawal from agreements that harm the domestic economy seems completely justified. The question is which agreements the Russian authorities are going to denounce and whether they really pose the same burden on the economy that the prime minister spoke about.

None of the officials have yet begun to specify which agreements will be revised, except that Deputy Minister of Economic Development Maxim Medvedkov mentioned that the conversation will primarily focus on agricultural products. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to catch a hint of the notorious “Bush legs,” which were regularly persecuted in Russia when certain trade disagreements with the United States arose. In addition, it can be assumed that Polish and Baltic farmers will be affected by the incendiary speeches of their leaders at a rally in Tbilisi and the American interceptor missiles near the borders of Russia. And on the way of Ukrainian products (and at the same time steel) new obstacles will arise on the way to Russia.

And if today it is pointless to guess who won and who would lose from joining the WTO, then in the listed cases everything is quite simple, since we have already gone through all this more than once. An agricultural lobby has long been established in Russia, thanks to which the country strives not only to become an energy superpower, but also an agricultural one. But there are also smaller “meat lobby” and “grain lobby”. They definitely win. The losers are not American or Polish farmers - what do we care about them - but all of us, consumers. Since restrictions on the import of food products, as a rule, lead to their rise in price. And the emerging decline in consumer inflation may turn into a new round.