House votes 424-8 to suspend normal trade relations with Russia

(Image credit: KenHoward/iStock.)

published 17 March 2022

The House on Thursday passed legislation to suspend normal trade relations with both Russia and Belarus, yet another effort from U.S. lawmakers "to inflict economic pain on the Kremlin for its unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine," CNN reports.

The bipartisan-backed bill will now move to the Senate, where it is expected to pass; Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday he would work to push the bill through quickly once it made it past the House.

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The bill sailed through the chamber 424 to 8, The Wall Street Journal notes, and revokes both Russia and Belarus' most-favored-nation trade status, a move President Biden announced last week. The legislation also "requires the U.S. trade representative to urge Russia to be suspended from the World Trade Organization and to stop Belarus's membership application process," a symbolic gesture, the Journal notes, considering the WTO has no process in place for removing a member.

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Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.

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