U.S. Department of Commerce starts Belarusian market economy review

Within one month parties concerned are expected to submit their comments about various aspects of Belarus such as foreign currency operations, investment regulations, employment relations, state property, and progress in negotiations on joining the WTO. Once it is done, the U.S. Department of Commerce will decide on the advisability of arranging public hearings about classifying Belarus as a market economy country. The final results may be published in November.

Belarus inherited its non-market economy status automatically after the USSR's collapse. The status allows the U.S. government to enforce restrictive customs and tariff measures to individual kinds of Belarusian products, which makes exporting such products economically pointless, in order to protect American companies. For instance, in order to calculate the size of an anti-dumping duty for a non-market economy country the price for the product is determined bearing in mind conditions of a specifically chosen matching country instead of the normal conditions of the non-market economy country, thus allowing introducing an excessive duty.

Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania have already been able to successfully get their economy status reviewed.

In October 2019 the Belarusian Economy Ministry and Crowell & Moring Company signed an agreement on providing legal counsel to the process of classifying Belarus as a market economy country. In December 2019 the Belarusian government sent an application to the U.S. Department of Commerce to initiate the status review procedure. The necessary arguments were provided. The U.S. Department of Commerce recognized that the Belarusian side had provided sufficient proof for it to start the procedure.

Economy Ministry representatives noted that Belarus assumes that its economic policy has been compliant with market principles for many years, this is why the revision of the economy status by the U.S. Department of Commerce will formally confirm the de facto state of affairs. The market economy status will allow Belarus to avoid discriminatory methods used to calculate rates of protective duties. Unjustifiably high duties on Belarusian imports to the USA will be scrapped, thus helping increase the volume of Belarusian export to the USA.

Apart from obvious economic benefits from the point of view of normalization of Belarusian-American relations a positive outcome of the process will have serious image-enhancing advantages for Belarus as part of the international trade system. Apart from that, the market economy status obtained from U.S. bodies will help secure non-discriminatory commitments for Belarus in the course of joining the World Trade Organization.