Russia is responsible for murdering and maiming American soldiers in Afghanistan by paying a bounty on US soldiers killed by the Taliban. Russian is also interfering in our elections, both in 2016 and 2020, intervening in the Syrian civil war, invading the Ukraine and interfering with European elections. Why are Americans and Europeans still buying Russian caviar and vodka, oil, gas and steel? Why hasn’t Congress or the President taken any action against Putin’s expansionist regime?
According to the US Census Bureau, in 2019, US imports from Russia totaled $22.28 billion, a gain of 50% from the end of the Obama administration. We have a trade deficit with Putin’s country of $14 billion. Over $1 billion of this trade was in iron and steel, two industries that pollute the Russian countryside and beyond. Caviar imports from Russia were about $700 million last year.
The United States produces some of the finest vodka in the world, including Smirnoff’s and Tito’s. Russian Standard Vodka is owned by the Russian government, but can be found on thousands of liquor store shelves across the country. Additionally, the US also now produces world-class caviar.
The Robb Report, a high-end consumer magazine, proclaims that “From Eric Ripert to Daniel Boulud to Dan Barber to Thomas Keller, when America’s best chefs want premium seafood, especially caviar, they go to Browne Trading Company.” Browne Trading Company sells American caviar to well-healed restaurants and clubs. Snake River Royal White Sturgeon Caviar, North American Caviar Company and the American Caviar company also produce world-class caviar in the United States.
Sturgeon AquaFarms in Bascom, Fla., is one of the largest sources of beluga caviar in the world and the only one in the US. Mark Zaslavsky, a Russian immigrant, brought his beluga fish to the US. His farm is the only US-based company legally allowed to breed beluga.
The Keystone XL pipeline runs from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois and Texas. In 2015, the controversial pipeline was temporarily halted by President Barack Obama because of potential environmental damage. However, on Jan. 24, 2017, just four days after his inauguration, President Donald Trump reversed Obama’s action to permit the pipeline’s completion. Trump proclaimed that it would be built with American steel, but it wasn’t.
According to Bloomberg.com, Russian company Evraz manufactured in Russia about one quarter of the steel pipe used for the Keystone XL project. Most of the other pipe was made in Canada. Evraz is owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who is a close ally of Putin and a Trump family friend. Roman Abramovich’s wife Dasha Zhukova is a friend of Ivanka Trump and reportedly attended Trump’s inauguration as her guest. Evraz has also actively lobbied against US laws that mandate that Keystone XL’s steel pipe be made in the US.
We don’t need Russian vodka, caviar or steel. However, we need to teach Russia a lesson: don’t mess with the United States. Don’t interfere with our elections. Don’t intervene in European elections. Don’t invade sovereign nations like the Ukraine.
We should coordinate the boycott with our European and other allies. Europe is reliant on Russian gas and oil, but the US can supply Europe with all the fossil fuels it needs. The US is now the world’s largest source for oil and gas.
Russia needs to sell the western world oil, steel and other products to prop up its flailing economy. With Russia’s economy weak, a boycott of Russian products by the United States, Europe and other nations will make the Russian bear flounder.
Joel Joseph is a civil rights attorney and chairman of the Made in the USA Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting American-made products. Email joeldjoseph@gmail.com. Phone 310 MADE-USA.
From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2020
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