Saga of the Jackson Amendment

The U.S.-Soviet trade agreement rejected by Moscow last week involved a remarkably strange piece of legislation. The enactment of the Trade Reform Act, after two years of haggling and deliberation, marked a rare moment when Congress not only dictated U.S. foreign policy but also tried to determine the domestic policy of another country. During its two-year peregrination to passage, the bill gave rise to some strange alliances and taut confrontations. Congressional conservatives opposing trade with Russia joined with liberals concerned with human rights and the AFL-CIO, which feared the loss of American jobs. U.S. Jewish organizations were firmly ranged against the actions of a Jewish Secretary of State. Two Presidents vied for power with a Senator who was after their job. The highlights:

MAY 29, 1972. At the Moscow summit, President Nixon and Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev agree on liberalizing U.S.-Soviet trade as an element of their ripening policy of detente.

AUGUST. To discourage Jews from applying to leave for Israel, the Soviet government clamps on an emigration tax of as much as $30,000 a person.

SEPTEMBER. Washington Senator Henry Jackson, working closely with U.S. Jewish leaders, links the prohibitive Soviet tax with the trade bill Nixon has placed before Congress. Jackson declares: "The time has come to place our highest human values ahead of the trade dollar."

OCT. 4. Jackson, along with 76 Senate cosponsors, tacks an amendment onto the trade-bill legislation prohibiting most-favored-nation status for any "non-Market-economy country" that limits the right of emigration--a scarcely veiled allusion to the plight of Soviet Jewry. A similar amendment is introduced in the House by Ohio Congressman Charles A. Vanik.

OCT. 18. The Soviet-American trade agreement, the outlines of which were agreed on at the Moscow summit, is signed in Washington.

SEPTEMBER, 1973. PepsiCo Chairman Donald M. Kendall and other business leaders who stand to benefit from increased trade unite to lobby against the amendment. Administration spokesmen continue to accuse Jackson of unwarranted interference in Soviet domestic affairs.

DEC. 11. In its first test, the Vanik Amendment breezes through the House 319 to 80. Kissinger says that he might recommend a presidential veto of the entire trade bill if a compromise on the amendment cannot be found.

MARCH 6,1974. Exploring a compromise, Kissinger and Jackson consider allowing the President to extend the trade benefits if the Soviets would give specific assurance that they would end harassment of emigres and substantially increase levels of emigration over the high mark set in 1973. Kissinger tells Jackson that Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko has privately assured him that the flow of Jewish emigres will increase and harassment will diminish.

AUG. 15. A week after Nixon's resignation, President Ford suggests, at a breakfast meeting with the amendment's Senate backers, that an 18-month waiver be put on its punitive provisions. He promises to act unilaterally to invoke them if Soviet assurances to Kissinger of liberalized emigration are not carried out.

OCT. 18. An exchange of letters between the two Henrys is released. Henry Jackson spells out specific criteria that the Congress expects to be followed, including minimum emigration quotas of 60,000 people a year. Though Jackson and Jewish leaders are now willing to let the amended bill pass, conservatives and labor leaders remain opposed. In Moscow, at a state dinner for U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon, Brezhnev offers a premonitory toast: "Attempts to condition the development of trade and economic ties by putting demands to the Soviet Union on questions totally unconnected with the trade and economic field and lying fully within the domestic competence of states are utterly irrelevant and unacceptable."

OCT. 26. Visiting Moscow, Henry Kissinger is lectured by an angry Leonid Brezhnev and handed a letter from Gromyko. The letter, which is not made public for two more months, denounces the Jackson Amendment and threatens rejection of the 1972 trade agreement.

DEC. 3. Before the Senate Finance Committee, Kissinger reaffirms that he and President Ford, at Vladivostok, have received Soviet assurances of good faith in allowing emigration.

DEC. 13. The Senate passes the trade bill with the Jackson Amendment and the 18-month conditional waiver.

DEC. 16. The Senate votes to amend the Export-Import Bank bill to limit credits to the Soviet Union to $300 million. With the U.S. economy in danger, supporters of the measure argue, Americans are unlikely to favor mass subsidization of the Soviet economy.

DEC. 18. Moscow releases the Gromyko letter and denies that it gave Kissinger assurances of an increase in Soviet emigration--a warning that the agreement itself may be rebuffed.

DEC. 20. The Senate and House pass a final compromise trade bill.

JAN. 3,1975. Ford signs the Trade Reform Act into law.

JAN. 14. Kissinger announces Soviet rejection of the trade agreement.

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