WHY TRUMP SHOULD VETO THE RUSSIAN SANCTIONS BILL
Submitted by christian on Thu, 07/27/2017 - 12:23
- The legislation interferes with Constitutionally derived executive power : The current legislation seeks not only to impose sanctions that have been proposed by Congress rather than the Executive, but the bill would force Trump and ostensibly any successor in the White House to go through Congress in order to repeal the sanctions. In this sense, the legislation grants the Legislature powers which are generally a prerogative of the Executive branch.
- Losing Europe: The Bill foresees the imposition of sanctions on any company (including European) which contributes to the development, maintenance, modernisation or repair of energy export pipelines by the Russian Federation. Depending on its implementation, this could affect infrastructure transporting energy resources to Europe, for instance the maintenance and upgrade of pipelines in Russia that feed the Ukraine gas transit system. It could also have an impact on projects crucial to the EU's diversification objectives such as the Baltic Liquefied Natural Gas project. The one place where America still has friends is Europe but just about every EU nation, including France opposes the new sanctions. Europe hasn’t suddenly become ‘pro-Russia’ but Europe does business with Russia in spite of previous sanctions, this is particularly true in the energy sector. The current crop of sanctions effectively disallow European companies from doing the business they have done for years with Russian conglomerates. Europe has voiced its opposition to the US moves in the strongest possible manner, ranging from written condemnation deriving from individual nation states, to a strongly worded pledge to retaliate against the US from the European Union should the sanctions become US law. Can America really afford to lose Europe over a domestic crusade against anything Russian? The clear answer is no.
- Bad for US business: America’s leading companies have come out strongly condemning the new legislation for many of the same reasons European companies have. These companies include, BP, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Boeing and Citigroup, MasterCard, Visa, Ford, Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, International Paper, Caterpillar, and Cummins.
- The decision for Trump: The fact that Russia has condemned the move at a time when the US and Russia are at long last cooperating in south western Syria. ought to simply add one more layer of motivation for Trump to do the only thing that makes sense in terms of the wider world beyond the D.C. bubble: Trump should veto the bill !
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