ArmInfo. The US Senate by a majority vote decided to submit for discussion and subsequent voting a resolution condemning the plan of the Donald Trump administration, under which several sanctions would be lifted from several companies, including Rusal, EuroSibEnergo and En + related to Oleg Deripaska. BBC informs.
To recall, the Armenal plant in Yerevan, part of Rusal, also faced US sanctions. Armenal is the largest exporter of finished products not only to the USA, but also to the countries of the European Union. According to the RA Statistics Service, in Armenia the output of aluminum foil in January-November 2018 in comparison with the same period of the previous year, decreased by 12% - to 26,714 tons. According to statistics, in November alone the production of aluminum foil decreased by 9.7% to 2004 tons.
However, if the resolution is adopted by both houses of Congress, the sanctions against the Deripaska companies will remain in force. 57 senators voted for a resolution condemning the White House's plan, 42 were against. Republicans, mostly inclined to support Trump's initiatives, have a small majority in the house- 53 seats against 47 Democrats. That is, some members of the Trump party also voted for the resolution against lifting the sanctions. In order for the plan to be canceled and the sanctions against the Deripaska companies remain in force, a resolution declaring it must pass both chambers of Congress. In the lower house, unlike in the Senate, most of the seats are occupied by the Democrats, most of them hotly supporting sanctions against Russia and suspicious of any attempts to weaken them. Yesterday, the leader of the democratic minority in the US Senate, Charles Schumer, called on Republicans to refuse to support the decision of the US administration to lift restrictions on these companies, Reuters reports. "Now is not the time to abandon the source of influence on the Russian government," said Schumer. The leader of the Democrats in the Senate noted that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections has not yet been completed, while the documents indicate that Deripaska had connections with the former head of the election headquarters of the incumbent US President Donald Trump Paul Manafort. To recall, the US Treasury announced the decision to lift sanctions against Deripaska's assets on December 19. It is not a help to the Kremlin and "has no political motivation," explained the head of the department Steven Mnuchin. Sanctions against Deripaska himself remain. N + and UC Rusal are not accused of anything except havening connection with Deripaska, according to the editorial article of The Wall Street Journal, which criticizes the initiative of Schumer. The Russian entrepreneur refused to control these companies, thus fulfilling the conditions of the US Treasury for the lifting of sanctions. If Schumer succeeds to block a deal with the treasury, the rest of the organizations that are under US sanctions will learn a lesson from that one. Other possible negative consequences of the perseverance of the Democrats could be the nationalization of the aluminum producer or the conclusion of a deal with China for its purchase, the newspaper notes.