Posted on 02/28/2003 12:45:37 AM PST by Voronin
Senate Committee Approves Normal Trade Relations with Serbia
(Hundreds of tariff provisions include one aimed at Pakistan carpets)
(570)
By Bruce Odessey
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The Senate Finance Committee has approved a bill that would extend normal trade relations, otherwise known as most-favored nation status, to Serbia and Montenegro and make hundreds of non-controversial small changes to U.S. trade law.
The bill approved February 27 consists mostly of more than 300 provisions for tariff suspensions on imports of goods not produced domestically and traded in small volume. Both the House of Representatives and Senate need to pass the bill before the president can sign it into law. The House passed a similar bill in 2002, but the Senate never considered its own version before that session of Congress adjourned.
The Finance Committee bill would restore normal trade relations with Serbia and Montenegro, which were withdrawn in 1992.
Another provision would extend Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) tariff benefits to certain hand-knotted and hand-woven carpets, a provision requested by the Bush administration especially aimed at Pakistan. Such benefits could also accrue to Turkey, Nepal, Egypt and Morocco.
Not in the bill was a provision that had passed in the 2002 House version aimed at giving benefits to Turkey. It would have created "qualifying industrial zones" in Turkey where certain goods produced jointly by Turkish and Israeli manufacturers could enter the U.S. market duty free.
A Finance Committee staff member said, however, that the Turkey provision became too controversial to stay in the bill. The controversy arose when some Finance Committee members wanted to exclude tariff benefits for steel imports covered by temporary higher duties imposed by President Bush in 2002 under Section 201 of U.S. trade law, he said.
The bill would also make these changes:
-- correct a mistake in the 2002 Trade Act that inadvertently raised duties for certain goods from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru eligible for preferential tariffs under the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA).
-- harmonize the intellectual property criteria for eligibility under GSP, ATPA and Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA) preferential tariffs.
-- modify the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and CBTPA to extend tariff benefits to allow use of U.S.-formed fabrics or U.S.-formed components, whether cut to shape or knit to shape, using U.S.-formed yarns, in garments that are otherwise produced from fabrics formed in the region.
An amendment to the bill expresses unhappiness with the draft agreement on modalities, or specific details and time frames, for the World Trade Organization (WTO) agriculture negotiations submitted in Geneva by Stuart Harbinson, chairman of those negotiations.
The amendment describes the Harbinson draft as leaving too many unfair advantages for European Union (EU) farmers, especially by accepting the EU position for equal percentage reductions in domestic support. Under current WTO rules the EU can spend $60,000 million a year in domestic support, the United States only $19,100 million.
The amendment also says the Harbinson draft allows countries to maintain prohibitively high tariffs on agricultural imports.
Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican chairman of the Finance Committee, said at a February 26 meeting that senators want to send a strong signal as the WTO agricultural negotiations move toward a crucial March 31 deadline for agreeing on modalities.
"Frankly, these agriculture negotiations are so important to America's farmers that I would rather see no deal at all than a bad deal," Grassley said.
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)
VRN
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