American firms in Russia paid the country $1.2 billion in profit taxes in 2023, according to figures from campaign group B4Ukraine and the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Institute shared exclusively with Newsweek. This tax contribution makes the U.S. the largest contributor of foreign profit taxes to Russia, something a former top U.S. diplomat called “shameful.”
How do sanctions not prevent this? I genuinely do not understand.
I was curious too. It looks like all of the sanctions are for inports from russia, and freezing russian assets that are not in russia. There are a lot of companies that have pulled operations from Russia, but there doesn’t seem to be any requirement to do so.
Well, it hasn’t been sanctioned. There aren’t any steps taken to force businesses that were previously operating in Russia to pull out.
Tbh, if we’re looking at it from a capitalist viewpoint (and they are, so we have to in order to discuss things as they are), pulling out entirely is a bad decision, so taking that step without being forced to isn’t going to happen.
It’s a bad decision on the capitalist level for a few reasons. One, it’s short term thinking. The only reason to pull out would be if you thought that things would stay exactly the same for at least the next fifty years or so. Since Putin is unlikely to live that long, and there’s a fairly predictable set of possibilities for the power structure after that, it makes more sense to stay there, but scale down as much as possible without triggering russian reprisals in the form of seizure of assets, fines, etc.
Divesting their assets in Russia entirely is difficult when putin has made it extremely costly to do so, more costly than any likely loss of profit and stock value caused by just staying there and minimising things.
It’s only when you view things as a sane citizen of the world that it looks horrible. Even then, you don’t see a big outcry from other places to abandon ship here in the states, or up in Canada (there’s a current power flux there), in England, or pretty much anywhere. Russia is only drawing heat because they made their moves so big and obvious. Literal war draws attention in a way that even the human rights violations of China and the US don’t.
Even that is linked more to Russia and Ukraine being so close to the EU. You don’t see as much heat directed at actions taken by smaller countries further away. NATO and the EU vs Russia is big news because it’s massively dangerous on a global scale. But, what’s happening isn’t unusual or rare, it’s just more likely to spill over.
So, nobody is going hard at their capitalist cronies and putting real pressure on them to pull out entirely.
The US, UN, and multiple other countries sanctioned Russia in 2022, 2023, 2024, and added more sanctions yesterday.
But did they sanction those companies?
That’s not how sanctions work.
But, it is partially how some sanctions work.
Trade sanctions, you can have unilateral ones, or narrowly focused ones.
Afaik, there aren’t any unilateral economic trade sanctions against russia. There’s a shit ton to sort through, but none that target the industries from the posted article. Or am I missing where those segments have been targeted? I only saw stuff related to energy, mining, and similar war necessary materials/supplies.
But I know I didn’t see anything that would bar all trade
Edit: I just noticed that I said companies before. Is that the issue?
Apparently it’s all about exports out of russia. Western countries have blocked importing russian goods, and frozen any assests russia has internationally.
Only companies that are blocked are the defense contractors. A lot of companies voluntarily pulled operations out of russia. It’s not mandatory though. Certian banking systems are completely frozen, which looks to be the hardest sanction.
But i admit to really just reading up on it. I thought it was a lot more expansive than it is.
That’s what I thought, though I could have sworn there were more than just defense contractors barred from exporting to Russia.
Same. All of the news reports made it sound like the country couldn’t get anything in or out.