"Fortunately, this question might be decided this May," Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov said in an interview in Washington. U.S. President George W. Bush is scheduled to make his first visit to Russia on May 23 for a four-day summit with President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has reached a critical mass of positive economic and political changes, which should tip the balance in the country's favor, Sharonov said.
The Commerce Department has six to eight weeks to make a decision after receiving final arguments April 8. Sharonov said the Russian government will target U.S. opponents' criticisms.
Russia's status has generated far more interest than other such cases, and the turnout at Wednesday's hearing was unmatched by previous debates, participants said.
Granting market status to Poland or Latvia could not have disrupted world trade, said Bradford Ward of Dewey Ballantine, counsel to three U.S. steel companies. Though far from a clear-cut case, Kazakhstan drew little protest when granted market-economy status earlier this week, largely because it carries little threat to the U.S. economy.
The main U.S. opposition to recognizing Russia as a market economy comes from the steel, nitrogen fertilizer and silicon metals industries, all of which have brought anti-dumping cases against Russian imports; market status would give Russia a stronger position from which to fight such cases.
"The rules of the game will allow Russia to assert a much more effective defense [in anti-dumping cases]," said Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, who attended the hearing. "And even if Russia as a market economy loses such cases, the countervailing duties would be significantly lower."
"It would strongly enforce U.S.-Russian economic relations and strengthen Putin's efforts to integrate the country into the world economy," Somers said.
Much of the debate focused on whether Russia's good intentions are enough. While proponents argue that Russia has made huge strides in the past two years, opponents said Russia is still travelling the road to a free market, and that's not the same as being there.
"The situation in Russia is two steps forward, one-and-a-half or one-and-three-fourths steps back," Ward said. One day Russia will be ready but "this is not that day."
Though Russia is far from an economic or social utopia, proponents say it meets U.S. criteria on currency convertability, labor and wage controls, government control of production, resources and pricing, and controls or barriers to investment. "The test for market economy status is not whether a country has a pure market economy -- no one does -- but the extent of government intervention," said Scott Antel, partner at Andersen Russia, which prepared a rebuttal on behalf of steel companies Severstal, Novolipetsk and Magnitogorsk.
Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this story from Washington.
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