Kazakhstan’s Rise as an Economic Middle Power and the Future of U.S. Trade Relations
Only a few decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has become a globalized middle power, the only post-Soviet state in Central Asia to have achieved that distinction, thanks to fundamental decisions President Nursultan Nazarbayev made immediately after independence. From the beginning, the United States has had a positive relationship with Kazakhstan. However, a Cold War-era law, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the 1974 Trade Act, continues to prohibit the United States from granting the status of Permanent Normal Trade Relations to Kazakhstan. Washington should consider exempting Astana from this Cold War–era provision, which no longer reflects current bilateral realities. This would encourage a new generation of U.S. business investments in Kazakhstan as the nation moves forward as a global middle power.
Introduction
Kazakhstan is one of the United States’ most reliable Central Asian partners, yet a relic of Cold War legislation still acts as a small point of friction in the bilateral trade relationship. Despite the country’s transformation into a globally recognized emerging middle power and a reliable U.S. ally, Kazakhstan is still technically denied the most-favored-nation trade status, otherwise known as Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR), under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.
The U.S. Congress originally passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in 1974 to encourage the promotion of global human rights. However, unless Congress exempted a country from this act, signatories could not gain most-favored-nation trade status. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment technically remains in force for Kazakhstan, though Congress has routinely waived it on an annual basis.
Although the annual waiver ensures that Jackson-Vanik does not affect bilateral trade, the law’s continued application to Kazakhstan carries its own symbolic weight. By retaining Kazakhstan in the same legislative category as states with which the United States has fundamentally adversarial relationships, Washington inadvertently signals ambivalence toward a partner it publicly regards as reliable and strategically important. Granting Kazakhstan PNTR status would require no new appropriations, tariff changes, or trade concessions while demonstrating that the bilateral relationship has moved decisively beyond the Cold War framework that produced the Amendment in the first place. Repealing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment would send the clearest, lowest-cost signal of Washington’s long-term commitment to Central Asia and reinforce U.S. strategic positioning in a region where Russia and China have sought to deepen their influence.
The Jackson-Vanik Amendment and PNTR
PNTR is a bilateral trade status that guarantees low tariffs and promotes increased exports, foreign investment, and strong diplomatic relations between the United States and the signatory country. In practice, it is often linked to World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements that ensure fair and consistent trade practices. Despite meeting these standards, Kazakhstan has not received U.S. PNTR status.
This unfavored status was strongly influenced at times in the past by the stance of U.S. government offices as well as private-sector human-rights lobbies that insisted that the United States should crack down on Kazakhstan. For example, officials in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor issued influential annual reports that “named and shamed” countries like Kazakhstan for not meeting U.S. and EU ideals. They usually focused on the lack of totally free media in Kazakhstan and the government’s refusal to allow the existence of real political opposition. Citing these reports, human-rights advocates sought to block or to delay U.S. political and economic engagement with Kazakhstan.
In 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which exempted Russia and even Moldova from this four-decade-old piece of Cold War legislation. The Act also allowed the president to sanction specific Russian citizens for human rights violations. In 2016, the Global Magnitsky Act was signed into law, extending the right to sanction any foreign persons for human rights violations. Despite the Global Magnitsky Act rendering Jackson-Vanik’s country-wide restrictions unnecessary, the Amendment still legally pertains to Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan’s Rise as a Middle Power
At independence, President Nursultan Nazarbayev made essential and far-sighted decisions that set Kazakhstan firmly on the path to its rise today. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the fifteen newly independent states in Eastern Europe and Asia suddenly found themselves without daily guidance from the Kremlin. Across Central Asia, leaders faced the challenge of constructing sovereign governments, foreign policies, and internationally competitive economies almost from scratch.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, a former factory worker who had joined the Communist Party, slowly worked his way up. While Nazarbayev was expected to be unprepared and uncomfortable leading an independent nation, that was far from the case. Through a series of calculated decisions and reforms, Nazarbayev built a once-neglected Kazakhstan into one of the world’s most crucial middle powers.
Nazarbayev’s first fundamental decision was to plan serious economic and financial reforms to transition away from the communist command economy of the past. With top-down policy implementation, Kazakhstan’s commerce and business leaders had no choice but to fall in line with President Nazarbayev’s economic reform policies. Today, more than three decades after the country’s independence, the international consensus is that Kazakhstan’s GDP per capita is now on par with Russia.
Furthermore, at the beginning of its independence, Kazakhstan also pioneered a positive international diplomacy called “multi-vector foreign policy.” This strategy states that in dealing with the four global powers—Russia, China, the European Union, and the United States— Kazakhstan would be a friend to all and enemy of none. It stood ready to welcome with open arms both social and economic contacts and programs with each of these global powers, despite ideological differences.
Very early on, Nazarbayev also developed contracts with major American and European hydrocarbon companies to explore and to extract Kazakhstan’s world-class oil and natural gas reserves. Within several years, with vast hydrocarbon wealth pouring into its national coffers, Kazakhstan was well-positioned economically to pursue its goals for modernization and globalization. Due to Nazarbayev’s early economic and trade reforms, U.S. economic engagement took off from the early 1990s, especially in the hydrocarbon sector but also in mining and infrastructure development. The foundational reforms Nazarbayev implemented helped transform Kazakhstan from a state of the Soviet periphery into one of the most dynamic and globally integrated economies in Central Asia.
Despite this progress, U.S. trade law has not been updated to reflect Kazakhstan’s current status under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. Passing a law to annul this outdated amendment would not in any way change the already strong U.S.-Kazakhstan bilateral relationship, but would simply pave the way for further engagement with the region.
Policy Recommendations
Jackson-Vanik, though it does not inhibit trade, is still a persistent signal of ambivalence toward a valuable Central Asian partner, regardless of how routinely it is waived. Now is the time for the U.S. Congress to act and communicate its commitment to Astana.
While human rights advocates might argue that Jackson-Vanik is still a symbolic piece of leverage on democracy and human rights concerns, the amendment no longer has any meaningful coercive power. Rather than applying indiscriminate sanctions under Jackson-Vanik, Washington already has a more diplomatically sustainable instrument: the Global Magnitsky Act. This act addresses human rights violations and imposes targeted asset freezes and visa bans on specific individuals responsible for human rights abuses. Given that this superior tool already exists, the value of Jackson-Vanik has been fully superseded, and human rights advocates no longer have any reason to block the repeal of Jackson-Vanik concerning Kazakhstan.
Moreover, the strategic case is just as clear. Kazakhstan accounts for 39 percent of global uranium production, and in 2025 the United States imported goods from Kazakhstan totaling $4.1 billion. Kazakhstani officials have been explicit about the stakes: during an October 2025 Washington visit, Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin lobbied members of Congress to permanently remove Kazakhstan from the Jackson-Vanik list, citing critical minerals as a priority growth sector. Creating a stronger partnership would be a strategic move to ensure the security of U.S. technological supply chains. PNTR status would provide a legal permanence that institutional investors and multinational corporations can look towards when committing large amounts of capital for the extraction of critical minerals, capital that Kazakhstan needs to fully take advantage of its resources.
Kazakhstan has become an economic power that the United States can no longer ignore, and one that rival world powers are actively courting. Kazakhstan was the largest recipient of Belt and Road investments in 2025, receiving close to $23 billion in funds. Russia is also one of Kazakhstan’s biggest investors, contributing about $30 billion to projects across the country. With increased Chinese and Russian interest in Astana’s investment space, such a move would offer a low-cost yet meaningful signal of continued U.S. commitment to the region. As Russia’s regional credibility erodes because of its criminal war against Ukraine, the United States has a small window to capitalize on this opportunity to instate PNTR status and deepen its presence through forming an increased number of long-term trade connections. Now that Washington has a Special Envoy for South and Central Asia, Ambassador Sergio Gor, there is no better time to annul the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. Ambassador Gor has already expressed interest in repealing the amendment, and a bipartisan bill has recently been introduced in the House to do just that. Like the 2012 legislation that exempted Russia, the bill would exempt Kazakhstan from the amendment’s trade restrictions and extend PNTR status to Kazakhstan. Passage would require a simple majority in both chambers and presidential approval. Congress should pass this bill and bring U.S. foreign policy towards Kazakhstan out of the Cold War era, just like it did for Russia.
Conclusion
The Cold War ended more than three decades ago, and Kazakhstan spent those decades building exactly the kind of open, globally integrated economy that American foreign policy has always sought to encourage. Repealing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment as it applies to Kazakhstan signals that the United States recognizes a reliable partner, honors the relationship it has built, and intends to compete seriously in a region where its rivals are not standing still. Repeal would deliver the necessary legal permanence for the bilateral trade relationship and a clearer signal to the institutional investors and multinational corporations whose capital Kazakhstan needs to fully develop its critical minerals sector. These are indeed resources the United States has a direct strategic interest in securing. Congress has a bipartisan bill pending, a willing executive, and no credible reason to wait.
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Ambassador (ret.) Richard E. Hoagland spent his Foreign Service career in South and Central Asia. Early in his career, while based in Pakistan, he worked closely with the seven Afghan Resistance parties during the Soviet-Afghan War. Soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, he spent two years at the U.S Embassy in Tashkent, followed by three years at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he was the Public Affairs Officer. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, Charge d’affaires in Turkmenistan, Deputy Ambassador, and, for a period, Charge d’affaires in Pakistan. He is currently on the Board of Directors at the Caspian Policy Center in Washington, DC.
Image Credit: Kalpak Travel, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr