- As Putin continues his merciless assault,
the United States and our allies and partners
continue to work in lockstep
to ramp up the economic pressures on Putin
and to further isolate Russia on the global stage.
Later today, together with other NATO allies
and the G7, Canada, France, Germany,
Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom,
as well as European Union, we're going to jointly announce
several new steps to squeeze Putin
and hold him even more accountable
for his aggression against Ukraine.
And I want to speak to a few of those points today.
First, each of our nations is going to take steps to deny
"most favored nation" status to Russia.
A most favored nation status designation
means two countries have agreed to trade
with each other under the best possible terms,
low tariffs, few barriers for trade,
and the highest possible imports allowed.
In the United States, we call this permanent normal trade
relations, PNTR, but it's the same thing.
Revoking PNTR for Russia is going to make it harder
for Russia to do business with the United States.
And doing it in unison with other nations
that make up half of the global economy
will be another crushing blow to the Russian economy
that's already suffering very badly from our sanctions.