大汉奸柳传志
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2015
- Messages
- 3,601
- Reaction score
- -24
- Country
- Location
A 1970s US trade deal that unilaterally grants products worth billions of dollars from India and other developing countries tariff-free access to the American market is set to expire on December 31, as pressure mounts from Donald Trump supporters to let it die altogether.
Congress last week failed to agree on renewing the Generalized System of Preferences, despite Republicans and Democrats saying they support it and will try to bring it back to life.
But critics of the programme created to help developing nations grow their export industries argue that countries such as India have for too long abused the programme by ignoring its rules, and that past administrations have been too lax in enforcing them.
“There’s nothing developing about India or China any more — 600m people are in the middle class in India and that’s probably three or four times the size of our middle class,” said Dan DiMicco, former chief executive of steelmaker Nucor and a trade adviser to Mr Trump. “Just because there are pockets of real poverty — and there’s no doubt about it — that’s the job of their government to take care of, not our government.”
More than 3,500 products from 120 developing countries and territories are covered by the trade deal, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. In 2016 products worth $19bn were imported into the US tariff-free under the GSP, with business groups saying importers saved more than $700m in duties.
But economic nationalist supporters of the US president such as Mr DiMicco argue that countries such as India have failed for decades to live up to their end of the bargain and grant US companies reciprocal access.
“It’s a one-way street. It’s not supposed to be a one-way street,” said Mr DiMicco.“
India doesn’t qualify on any count,” Curtis Ellis, founder of the American Jobs Alliance which advocates hardline economic nationalist trade policies, wrote in an article published by Breitbart, the conservative outlet controlled by Steve Bannon, the former White House adviser. “It routinely rips off US intellectual property and blocks US imports through a combination of high tariffs, taxes and corrupt bureaucracy.”
The Trump administration, whose support for the GSP has been lukewarm compared with that of previous administrations, has indicated it wants to see it reformed.
The office of US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, which administers the programme, on Friday declined to comment when asked by the Financial Times whether the administration supported GSP renewal.
Backers of the trade deal say it benefits US businesses by providing sources of low-cost parts outside dominant China, and that any impact on competing companies in the US is relatively small. The $19bn in goods imported in 2016 represented a minuscule portion of the US’s total $2.2tn in goods imports.
The GSP programme has expired before, most recently in 2013. Businesses that use it are forced to pay duties until it is renewed, which last time took almost two years.
The Trump administration’s vow to rip up and rewrite decades of US trade policy has added a new layer of uncertainty, say backers of the trade deal.
“I fear it’s dead in Congress for the foreseeable future, regrettably. It really shouldn’t be controversial, but alas, as with so much regarding trade and this administration it could turn out to be more difficult than necessary,” said Clark Packard of the R-Street Institute, a pro-trade Washington think-tank.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress say they back renewing the GSP but ran out of time to do so this year.
Kevin Brady, chairman of the House ways and means committee, last week blamed Senate Democrats for not giving the GSP the green light.
A spokesman for Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance committee, which oversees trade matters, dismissed that as “nonsense” and said Republicans consumed with pushing tax reform had failed to advance GSP legislation.
A spokeswoman for Senator Orrin Hatch, the Republican chairman of the finance committee, said he would seek to renew GSP “as soon as possible” when Congress reconvenes in January
Mr Trump on Friday suspended some of Ukraine’s GSP privileges for failing to live up to its IP requirements while partially restoring Argentina’s.
“President Trump has sent a clear message that the United States will vigorously enforce eligibility criteria for preferential access to the US market,” Mr Lighthizer said. “The administration is committed to ensuring that other countries keep their end of the bargain in our trade relationships.”
https://www.ft.com/content/51aa539e-e764-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac0da
Congress last week failed to agree on renewing the Generalized System of Preferences, despite Republicans and Democrats saying they support it and will try to bring it back to life.
But critics of the programme created to help developing nations grow their export industries argue that countries such as India have for too long abused the programme by ignoring its rules, and that past administrations have been too lax in enforcing them.
“There’s nothing developing about India or China any more — 600m people are in the middle class in India and that’s probably three or four times the size of our middle class,” said Dan DiMicco, former chief executive of steelmaker Nucor and a trade adviser to Mr Trump. “Just because there are pockets of real poverty — and there’s no doubt about it — that’s the job of their government to take care of, not our government.”
More than 3,500 products from 120 developing countries and territories are covered by the trade deal, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. In 2016 products worth $19bn were imported into the US tariff-free under the GSP, with business groups saying importers saved more than $700m in duties.
But economic nationalist supporters of the US president such as Mr DiMicco argue that countries such as India have failed for decades to live up to their end of the bargain and grant US companies reciprocal access.
“It’s a one-way street. It’s not supposed to be a one-way street,” said Mr DiMicco.“
India doesn’t qualify on any count,” Curtis Ellis, founder of the American Jobs Alliance which advocates hardline economic nationalist trade policies, wrote in an article published by Breitbart, the conservative outlet controlled by Steve Bannon, the former White House adviser. “It routinely rips off US intellectual property and blocks US imports through a combination of high tariffs, taxes and corrupt bureaucracy.”
The Trump administration, whose support for the GSP has been lukewarm compared with that of previous administrations, has indicated it wants to see it reformed.
The office of US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, which administers the programme, on Friday declined to comment when asked by the Financial Times whether the administration supported GSP renewal.
Backers of the trade deal say it benefits US businesses by providing sources of low-cost parts outside dominant China, and that any impact on competing companies in the US is relatively small. The $19bn in goods imported in 2016 represented a minuscule portion of the US’s total $2.2tn in goods imports.
The GSP programme has expired before, most recently in 2013. Businesses that use it are forced to pay duties until it is renewed, which last time took almost two years.
The Trump administration’s vow to rip up and rewrite decades of US trade policy has added a new layer of uncertainty, say backers of the trade deal.
“I fear it’s dead in Congress for the foreseeable future, regrettably. It really shouldn’t be controversial, but alas, as with so much regarding trade and this administration it could turn out to be more difficult than necessary,” said Clark Packard of the R-Street Institute, a pro-trade Washington think-tank.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress say they back renewing the GSP but ran out of time to do so this year.
Kevin Brady, chairman of the House ways and means committee, last week blamed Senate Democrats for not giving the GSP the green light.
A spokesman for Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance committee, which oversees trade matters, dismissed that as “nonsense” and said Republicans consumed with pushing tax reform had failed to advance GSP legislation.
A spokeswoman for Senator Orrin Hatch, the Republican chairman of the finance committee, said he would seek to renew GSP “as soon as possible” when Congress reconvenes in January
Mr Trump on Friday suspended some of Ukraine’s GSP privileges for failing to live up to its IP requirements while partially restoring Argentina’s.
“President Trump has sent a clear message that the United States will vigorously enforce eligibility criteria for preferential access to the US market,” Mr Lighthizer said. “The administration is committed to ensuring that other countries keep their end of the bargain in our trade relationships.”
https://www.ft.com/content/51aa539e-e764-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac0da
